


Elevated Hearts

by B_does_the_write_thing



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A Complicated Middle, An Angsty Beginning, And a very happy ending, F/M, Gender Switched AU, While You Were Sleeping AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-03-05 02:21:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 59,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13378083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/B_does_the_write_thing/pseuds/B_does_the_write_thing
Summary: A While You Were Sleeping Genderswitched AU





	1. Chapter 1

There were two things that Truman Gold remembered about his son’s childhood. 

First, he remembered being with him- just...being with him. From the moment he had looked down at his son’s pink face still wrinkled and pink from the ordeal of birth, everything else had melted away. It had been just him and his boy, the two of them facing the world together. The words ‘heart defect’ had been a vague rustling in those early years, an inside joke to get out of gym class in the suburbs of Chicago where they built their home. 

On the weekend, they would pack up lunch some days, head to the L and spend the whole day riding the line from one end of town to the other. Neal would rattle off stats of the transit system to anyone who would listen, learning the names of strangers from strange off and exotic lands like Milwaukee. His boy would listen to their life stories between stops, his face glowing as sunlight poured through the windows and the train rattled through the streets of Chicago.

The second...the second was the days in the hospital. Not that Neal had ever complained he was dying or that his mother disappeared from their lives entirely. When they came to the hospital, Neal would just sneak out of the bed to sit at the window, where he could see the L. He charmed all the nurses entirely, with his stats and trivia about Chicago’s transit system that they began to take the train at lunch, just to come back and tell Neal about who they had seen. Soon even the doctors and pathologists started to stop by the little room at the end of the hall to tell Neal Gold about their trips on the L. 

They all gave his son a gift. They had brightened those darkening days with the simple thing that had made his son happiest, a stupid, silly, brilliant transit system that connected Chicago together. Gold remembered holding his son’s hand when waves of pain would wash through his small frame, the brown hair gone and once rosy cheeks as translucent as glass. Neal, too weak to speak, just staring up at him bravely as Gold recited all the statistics and tidbits back to his little boy.

Gold would have given his son the world, but to Neal, the L had been his world. 

So, when the end came...and the doctor shook his head and the orderlies pried him away from his son’s body, Gold had gone to the only place he had left. The first few years of hospital bills had taken his savings, the experimental therapy had cost him the house, but the hospital staff had looked the other way when they saw Truman Gold asleep on the couch by his son’s bed. The credit companies came for him after the funeral, and if Gold had not been so numb, he might have wondered how people could profit from a child’s death, but all care or concern had left him.

He paid the bills until there was nothing else to pay with, and then, he had gone to the only place he could think of. He went to where his son had been happiest. He went to the L. He got a job at Randolph/Wabash Station in the early morning shift, collecting tolls as people hurried to and from their busy lives and coward that he was, he could do nothing else but wait for the end to call for him like it had his son. 

However, fate seemed to have different plans for him. 

The sky outside had grown dark, the wind blowing across the lake so cold it cut through the heavy jacket he had thrown over his work clothes. He had wandered around Logan Square, not to see the old aristocratic buildings decked in their Christmas finery, but because he had not been ready to return back to his apartment. It was not his first holiday season without Neal, nor would it be his last, but something hung in the air of the city, and he was powerless to follow it up and down the streets of his neighborhood.

He turned aimlessly, only to find himself back on his own street. He lingered there for a moment before his frozen extremities urged him forward back to the relative warmth of his home. It was well past rush hour, the city already quiet as people began to stay indoors with their families and loved ones. It only belatedly struck him that it was Christmas Eve when he heard the church bells in the distance. 

“Gold?”

He looked up into dark eyes which were narrowing rapidly as they took him in. He blinked away the memories, stumbling out of them like a man in a fog, to offer an apologetic grimace to the woman standing before  him. “Regina,” he said with a nod. “Sorry, I must have...drifted off there for a moment.” 

The woman opened her mouth as if she was going to say something, but thought better of it. Instead, she gestured for him to follow her. “Come on,” she said as she turned and made her way to the ornate door that served as the main entrance to the old apartment building. “Have a drink with me.”

A lifetime ago, Gold may have teased her to say please, but in that lifetime there would have been a teenage son off in college, and perhaps he wouldn’t have been standing here on the sidewalk of Storybrooke Apartments on Christmas Eve. So, instead, he followed quietly behind her.

A loner by nature, his social life had disappeared long before Neal had been a flicker in his eye. He had married as men were supposed to do, and he had loved his wife and for a time he liked to think she had loved him as well. Somewhere in the early hours of the night with a screaming infant and bills stacked to the ceiling, she had drifted away from him and he had let her go as one would let a balloon sail away. Neal had become his world, and in the whirl of his short life, Gold had wanted for no other companion. He had been content with his share, and when he had lost Neal, there had been nothing and no one that could fill that hole.

His co-workers kept a respective distance, though he heard the whispers behind his back. Turnover was fairly high in public transit service, so the rumors had only widely grown over the five years he had worked there. Currently, he was on the witness protection program, thanks to his faint Scottish accent from his youth and his practiced scowl whenever someone tried to make small talk in the quiet hours of the morning. 

His landlady on the other hand….

Regina hadn’t waited for him, her office door ajar as he made it into the building. He stomped his feet to get the circulation moving in them again.  He glanced up to the second floor, wishing he could just keep going until he could slump against his own door, fumble with his keys before slipping into the darkness of his own quiet apartment until the alarm woke him all over again tomorrow. 

With his luck Regina would just follow him, so he squared his shoulders and headed into the office. “Sit,” Regina said as she flipped on the lights. He did as he was told, skin starting to prickle as the heater in the corner grumbled to life. “You eat already?” He hurried to nod, but Regina saw right through him. “You have to eat, Gold,” she sighed, disappearing into the door that separated her office from her apartment. There was the noise of rustling and seconds later, she re-emerged to toss an apple at him.

He just barely caught it but he mumbled his thanks as Regina lowered herself into her chair to survey him across the distance of her massive mahogany desk. He willed himself not to fidget, knowing it to be the difference between a quick escape or a forced tete a tete. Thankfully, there was no scent of a home cooked meal in the air so he breathed a sigh of relief. 

For her part, his landlady seemed content just to watch him. He rolled the apple underneath his fingers as his eyes drifted around the office as Regina unearthed a bottle out with two tumblers and without asking him uncorked the whiskey and poured them both a drink. 

From the other room, the scent of pine needles drifted out to him before his eyes landed on the back of the picture frame that always stood on Regina’s desk. With a nasty lurch in his stomach, he remembered and it suddenly became clear why Regina had been out on Christmas Eve. “I would have gone with you,” he said, a quiet guilt eating away at him which only fed the lingering annoyance he had been struggling against all day. 

“You didn’t come back after work,” she replied with a shrug as she thrust his drink out to him. “I assumed you had already gone.”

He shook his head, his fingers clenching the hem of his jacket. “I’m going tomorrow... after work,” he forced himself to say. Regina nodded in understanding and another quiet passed over them. 

Chicago Transit Authority workers usually could not afford a one bedroom in Logan Square, no doubt another reason his co-workers whispered conspiracy theories but the truth was stranger than fiction. 

Neal had chosen a small cemetery north of town, tucked into the forgotten parts of old Chicago. The commuter train that whistled overhead made it a less than peaceful place, but Gold had buried his son there regardless. He visited so often the first year that he had almost been an installation, another statue guarding the dead. His son was in an older area, where few people visited anymore so he had been surprised to find a woman standing over his son’s grave that first Christmas Eve.

Her life story had come tumbling out of her without him so much as speaking a word. She had inherited her parent’s apartment building, and she had fallen in love with the maintenance man’s son, Daniel. They had planned to run away together but on Christmas morning, she had woken to the news he had died in his sleep...cardiac arrest from an un-diagnosed heart defect. He had been twenty one. 

She hadn’t cried. She had just waited for him to tell her about Neal, how he had loved the trains, how he had been so brave and how even though they knew about his heart, nothing had been enough. When he had let it slip he had been staying in a shelter, she had frogmarched him back to Logan Square, shown him his new apartment and refused to take so much as a down deposit. 

At first it had chafed him, the pity. Regina would drop by unannounced to check how things were, if he needed anything, and it was only when he realized that she needed someone who understood her grief, that he allowed himself the same solace. He had never asked her what had drawn her to his son’s grave that night. It was an unspoken custom for them to both go to the graveyard on Christmas Eve together, and he internally kicked himself that it had slipped his mind. “How is Daniel?” he asked as he leaned back into his chair. 

Regina inhaled slowly, her lips tight and eyes suddenly glassy. “Same,’ she managed. “I left some flowers for Neal,” Regina said without looking at him and despite the jolt of fresh pain that spiked through his chest at his son’s name, he nodded in thanks and made a mental note to pay his respects to Daniel tomorrow.  “Now, how long has the window in your bedroom been broken?” 

Alarm bells went off in his head. “Not long,” he lied with an attempt for a nonchalant shrug. He had meant to get it fixed before she had noticed...his bedroom window faced the main street while Regina came and went through the courtyard mostly.

“Both panes shattered...Boarded up with cardboard...I wouldn’t have even noticed if Mrs. Lucas hadn’t complained of the draft.” Gold’s lips tightened involuntary, and Regina exhaled forcibly before leaning forward across the table. “What happened?”

“Baseball came through the window,” he answered with a wave of his hand. “Didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.” 

The neighborhood boys played stickball in the street from time to time. He could hear their shouts of exhalation whenever they were at play, and he found them soothing, a promise that life went on even if it did go without him. So, when the ball had come crashing through the bedroom one afternoon, his only thought had been how he wished it had been Neal’s triumphant and horrified shout to run from the consequences of that perfectly hit foul ball. 

Long after all the guilty parties had gone, Gold had stood over the shards of glass glistening in the sun until the shadows had crept to his feet, and only then had he cleaned up the mess. The ball remained in a place of honor by his beside, and for some odd reason it made him feel less alone. 

“Baseball?” Regina repeated incredulously. “You mean to tell me, you’ve had a boarded up window since this summer?”

Sensing the danger, Gold shook his head. Regina meant well but if she learned he had been living with a broken window since August, she was likely to start dropping by to check on him again. It had taken him nearly a year to break her of that habit the first time around, and he wasn’t looking forward to repeat visits.  “They aren’t the Cubs,” he said with a wry twist of his lips. “Just some kids. Could be a blizzard and they’d still be out there.”

“Well, I had it fixed,” Regina said archly before reaching under her desk.Gold spared a moment to consider his landlady, but she caught him watching and lifted a sardonic brow. “What?” she asked. 

“Nothing,” he hurried to say as he sought escape in the bottom of his glass. 

Unrelenting, Regina pressed. “No, what?” she demanded, her dark eyes brightening with the challenge. His relationship with his landlady could be exhausting but they brought out something in the other that they had buried from the world long ago. The two of them had skeletons in their closets and ghosts in their hearts. To the rest of the world they were as dead as their dreams, their lives as empty as their hearts, but in the little moments where it was just the two of them...sometimes the shells of their past selves drew each other out as if to remind them of what they had once been. 

“Is that a new shade of lipstick?” he asked with a nod toward the crimson red still lingering on the corners of her mouth. 

She chuckled before rolling her eyes at the ceiling. “Fixing a broken window means calling the insurance agency,” she reminded him with a wink. “Worth the ten dollars for free installation.”

Gold couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought of Regina flirting with whatever middle aged man they had sent over to try and give her the run around on her premiums. “Not the damsel in distress routine?”

Regina snorted. “The Evil Queen more like it,” she corrected. “There’s no such thing as damsels anymore, Gold.”

“No?”

“No,” Regina said with a emphatic shake of her head. “There’s just women like me and women like-”

“Me!” Gold froze in his chair as talons dug into his shoulder. Red hair cascaded over his forehead as Selena Mills pressed a sloppy kiss to his cheek. “Hiya Rum,” Selena purred. “Nice tie.” She straightened to flick at it underneath his coat. She didn’t bother to turn around to greet Regina, only offering a “Sissie” over her shoulder in greeting to her sibling. 

“Selena,” Regina greeted as Gold reached up to twist his tie out of her reach. 

Selena Mills had shown up at Storybrooke Apartments after Regina had inherited it, with a birth certificate to prove she was the first born daughter of the late Mrs. Mills, though not of the recently deceased Mr. Mills. Their lawyers had gone round and round on the inheritance of the property, but inexplicably, in the end, the two sisters had found their own kind of peace with each other. Selena now lived with Regina in the apartment’s only suite while working over at the Ladies Room. 

He had learned how to accept Regina, understanding her need to be around a kindred soul, but her sister...God help him, if the rent wasn’t so reasonable, he’d have moved as soon as his first lease expired. If it wasn’t for Neal, he’d even move back to Scotland just to put an ocean between him and Selena Mills. 

Selena pouted in what she thought a pretty fashion before she freed the tumbler from his numb grip and sauntered over to the desk to pour a shot of whiskey. He shot Regina a glare but she held her hands up innocently. “I thought you were working tonight?” she asked her sister. 

“They sent me home,” Selena answered his sister with a sniff. “It’s always slow on Christmas Eve, but not to worry, it’ll pick up after Christmas.” She perched up on Regina’s desk and winked down at him. “You gonna come visit me soon, Rummy?” 

“Leave Gold alone,” Regina admonished her sister with a swat of her hip. “You know he doesn’t like that nickname. Besides, he was just leaving.”

He threw a grateful look at Regina, though not grateful enough to offer her own out. “Oh!” Selena exclaimed. “But I just got here…”

“Long day,” he said with a gesture towards the window. Outside, the wind had picked up and the smell of rain was on the air. “Another early morning.”

Selena just smiled at him a wicked grin. “You know, Rum...I get off right about the time you start...” The innuendo hung heavy in the air as Selena made a production of winking at him over the lipstick stained tumbler rim. “Wouldn’t it be fun...just the two of us-”

With a well aimed square of her shoulders, Regina neatly knocked her sister off the side of the desk as she walked around the desk towards her apartment . The redhead stumbled to her feet with an outraged gasp as Gold shot to his as well. With a grateful look at Regina who was feigning innocence, he stammered a goodbye and turned to leave. 

Behind him, Regina called out, “You’re welcome for fixing your window before you froze to death!” but he didn’t look back. 

\--

When they asked him later, he would honestly be able to say he wouldn’t have noticed her if it hadn’t been Christmas morning. Barely seven yet, the sun had just risen to greet the day but the entire city still lay quiet. Gold worked every holiday. He had been employee of the month more times then he could count, and though he didn’t bother to so much as look up or greet the people coming through his early morning shift, he was on time, he got the job done and he didn’t drink on the job. 

Today, he was alone, his hands wrapped around a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the Jewish deli on the corner.  The other blue collar workers of the city had been crowded in the small space with him, some empty and vacant like him, others annoyed at having missed Christmas morning and others relieved to be anywhere but where they were supposed to be. He had another hour, maybe two before people began to come to the station. It would pick up a bit before the end of his shift, but for now, he could sit in silence and wait for the holiday to pass him by. 

His only caveat to the occasion was his wardrobe. Under his jacket, he wore the tie Neal had given him when he was six, bright blue with silver speckles that looked like snow. Gold stared down at it; it occurred to him that  his son would be wearing ties now, that they might be exchanging ties this very morning in a warm home by the fire, just the two of them-

A token dropped into the slot, and muscle memory overtook his arm. It reached up to slide the small coin up to meet his palm as his other hand moved to release the latch to allow the passenger access to the platform. He didn’t even look up until someone spoke.

“Merry Christmas,” they said and there was something knowing in their voice, something understanding and soft and kind and it was familiar enough that it pulled him out of his daydream just enough to realize they were waiting for a response. Gold only managed to look up to meet bright blue eyes crinkled in a smile before the sound of the express began to vibrate the elevated platform and the woman hurried away.

His body stood on its own volition, hands going to the glass partition a he stared helplessly after her. Her eyes had been as bright as the tie he had been wearing, and though she was facing away from him now, he could just make out the silver of her Christmas Eve dress under her navy jacket. Her hair was piled to the side of her head, and the sun caught the light on the dangling earrings swaying in the morning breeze. 

Gold was staring and he willed himself to sit back down, but there was something about the young woman that demanded he see her, notice her...know her. “Merry Christmas to you too,” he said to himself, thudding his forehead against the glass as he squeezed his eye shut in mortification. “Nice coat,” he continued as all the other things he could have said filtered through his brain. “Stay warm out there today. Do you need a map? You’re beautiful.” 

Allowing himself a moment- just a moment to admire her- he almost didn’t notice someone else was on the platform until the man stepped up to Gold’s stranger. It was too far away from him to hear, but he hadn’t let anyone else through...and he had been here before sunset. Something started to tingle across the back of his neck, and he was already reaching for the door when the woman laughed.

Her laugh was a clear dismissal and confident; this was not the first time she had handled an inappropriate come-on. She had done this before, she didn’t need some old man to fight her battles for her. Regina’s words about the extinction of damsels made him pause there in the doorway. He reminded himself he was fifty, probably twice this girl’s age, a pervert and a coward and he was about to turn around and slink back into the booth when three things happened in quick succession. .

The man grabbed for her.  
  
Fearless, the woman lunged forward as if to knock him off his feet. 

With their equal momentum and imbalanced heights, they bounced off each other. The man fell backwards on to the platform, the crash resonating for a moment before the shrill whistle of the express announced its imminent arrival. Gold didn’t notice either of those, all he could see was the woman’s surprised face as she fell backwards and down, down, down onto the tracks.

She hadn’t even fully disappeared from his sight before he was running towards the place she had disappeared. Thankfully, the station didn’t have live wires, but adrenaline thrummed through him as he rushed past the now fleeing man to the edge of the tracks.

She was sprawled out in the middle, her navy jacket opened like wings behind her. She had lost a shoe, and she wasn’t moving. There was a bleeding gash on her right temple, and her face was far too pale. She needed help. Neal’s voice started rattling through his head, all the statistics on why to never jump on the tracks. Gold ignored them all and the next thing he knew, he was beside her.    
  
“Miss? Miss? Are you okay?” he asked, hands fluttering just above her exposed neck, uncertain whether to touch or her not. She didn’t move, her eyelids fluttered and there was the soft rise and fall of her chest as she breathed but she was dead to the world. “Can you…”

The train whistled louder this time, and it occurred to him that the two of them were alone at the station. No one was coming to help.  “Miss, can you hear me? Miss?” He moved to gently pat her cheek, averting his eyes from the gaping dress although that only served to alert him to the express bearing down on them. “Oh god,” Gold groaned. “Please wake up. Please. Please.”

She was deaf to his pleas, and there wasn’t time to do much else. Gold leaned down, scooped her up in his arms before falling back down to the side of the track, just under the platform and out of the trains path as it sped like a bullet over them. The tracks rattled near to splintering and the noise was deafening. He clutched the stranger tighter, trying not to notice the scent of her perfume and failing miserably as her body soft and pliant rested against his. 

Something was starting to awaken in him, and Gold could only spare the thought that only a miracle could have brought him back from the dead, and yet, here he was on Christmas morning on the tracks of the L with a train roaring over him while he held an angel. 

As the train disappeared, he released the breath he had been holding and gently lifted up and away from the woman. She stirred slightly, a hand reaching out as if to grab him and he stilled. Her eyes fluttered open, and the brightest blue blinked up at him.

His face flickered into an uncertain expression, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth as his eyes softened in return. “Hi,” he managed as he pushed some hair from where it had fallen into the gash on her forehead. His heart had not stopped racing, going nearly as fast the express itself. The angel’s lips parted as if she was going to speak but then her eyes rolled back and her body went limp once more. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to PrissyGirl for reading through and assuring me this was ready to publish.

“Coming through!”

“Make way-”

“I need a doctor here!”

Gold took a step back as nurses rushed by, wheeling the woman from the tracks past him. Discombobulated from the chaos reigning in Northwestern Memorial emergency room, he stumbled after them. He was only faintly aware of the orange blanket wrapped around his own shoulders so he didn’t notice when it slipped off to puddle on the floor behind him.   
  
Shock, the EMTS had told him in the ambulance. They had insisted he ride with them to the ambulance despite his protests that the station couldn’t be left unattended. The stranger’s purse had somehow gone missing in the struggle, and some police officers had been left to comb the tracks for it while others started to close down the station for the day. 

Someone bumped into him, and for a brief, terrible moment, he lost sight of the stretcher. His knees, weak from his earlier adrenaline rush, trembled as his heart began to twist violently in his chest. He remembered the frightening midnight rush to this very hospital from the suburbs, how Neal had been so small and still and the sound the paddles had made when they had restarted his heart there in the ambulance. 

Everything hit him at once. He was back at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and once again, he didn’t have a clue what was happening. Bile rose in his stomach, and he turned to be violently ill in the trash can by the door, no doubt left there for just that reason. He sucked in steady, deep breaths, eyes clenched shut as he tried to get himself back under control. He stood, shaking, and wiped the back of his mouth but no one took notice of him.

As his breathing evened and his heart rate slowed, he forced himself to take stock of his surroundings. Despite it being Christmas, the emergency room was packed with people. There was a family surrounding their patriarch, his whole right arm swaddled in a dish towel as he winced and nursed what looked like a burn. Across from them, a young couple looked pale, miserable and sweaty from the flu, though they were holding hands over the bucket they were sharing. 

Over the intercom, someone paged a Dr. Mermac to the I.C.U. West and the doors to the ambulance bay swished open as someone went outside to sneak a smoke. The cool air was welcome in the stifling heat of the emergency room but Gold still shuddered. 

Everywhere he looked there were families. One large extended family were opening Christmas presents in their pajamas, but their eyes kept floating to the emergency room door, their smiles brittle. He swallowed, painfully aware of the taste of sick in his mouth, as he debated his next move. 

The doors to the emergency room shushed open. As a doctor stepped into the waiting room towards the large family, Gold saw her. His stranger lay just beyond the door, nurses surrounding her as they checked the brace around her head and neck. They had changer the bandage over the gash on her head, though the new one was already stained crimson. There was no one beside her, no one holding her hand, and it hit him that in that moment, she was as alone as he was.

He didn’t think much beyond that. He moved towards her just as a doctor materialized at the stretcher’s side. The doctor inquired on her vitals but before anyone could answer the doors closed again and swallowed their reply. Gold ‘s reflection in the opaque glass was lost in the dark shapes moving just beyond his vision. 

People brushed around him, but he remained rooted to the spot. He don’t know how long he stood there before a hand landed gently on his shoulder. It encouraged him to turn and around and retreat back to the endless waiting of the emergency room. 

“Sir, you need to step back, please sir.” He must have made a noise of protest, because the nurse’s grip grew firm. “I’m sorry, sir, family only-” she began only to cut off with a squeak as he looked over at her.

With a shock of blonde hair piled in a bun on the top of her head and bright hazel eyes, he almost didn’t recognize her until her face split in a large smile. “Mr. Gold!” she cried and threw her arms around him. He just barely caught her, holding her elbows stiff as she just as quickly pulled back from the hasty embrace. A self-aware embarrassment crossed her pixie features. “Bet you don’t remember me,” she said with a roll of her eyes toward the ceiling.

Gold didn’t remember a lot of details from the days Neal spent in the hospital. Everyone had been kind but faces and names had blurred together in his memory. It would be hard, however, to ever forget the young woman in front of him. Isobel Tinker had been Neal’s favorite nurse, the two of them as thick as thieves. Gold couldn't recall how many times she had snuck Neal out his room for an adventure through the hospital halls, or even up to the roof to look at the stars. Neal, captivated, had dubbed her his fairy godmother. Gold supposed she must have been at the funeral, but that whole day was a dark blur best left forgotten. 

“Nurse Tinker,” he greeted though he was looking past her toward the emergency room doors. She looked over her shoulder, puzzled, before her eyes noticed the orange blanket laying on the ground some feet away. Her eyes went wide as her mouth fell into an o of surprise as the pieces clicked into place. 

“You’re the one who saved the woman on the train tracks!” Her hands went to her mouth to stifle the volume of her voice. 

A few people looked around and Gold hunched his shoulders at the attention.“How is she?” he asked, and his voice was rough, desperate enough to pull the nurse out of her thrall. 

“They’ll take good care of her,” Tinker promised. He must not have looked convinced because she added, “Do you know her name? I can check her charts but in the meantime, why don’t you sit down and I’ll get you some coffee?”

He shook his head. “I don’t...I don’t know her name..they couldn’t find her purse-”

“Okay, okay,” Tinker soothed and it occurred to him that out of anyone in the world, this woman had seen at his most vulnerable. She had been the one to hold him back as the doctors had worked feverishly, her own grief lost in the voice of his own pain. He had never apologized...for the things he had said to her then...The odds of her working the emergency room on the day he came in...he swallowed.

“Sorry,” he managed and her eyes brightened with surprise. “It just...she doesn’t have anyone else,” he explained with a ragged gesture towards where she had disappeared into the depths of the hospital. 

Nurse Tinker paused, and then something glinted in her eyes. Her hands flew to his forehead and pulse in rapid fire. Startled, he moved to swat her hand away but she just maneuvered his wrist to measure his pulse. Baffled, he stilled and looked around at the people around them, but no one seemed to be watching anymore.

“Shock,” she sighed and now her hands were on the small of his back and guiding him towards the admittance doors. “Nothing for it, better get you checked out.”

He stammered something about insurance, but she pretended not to hear him. The emergency room doors hissed open and they passed through it unmolested. No one stopped them, the sight of the diminutive nurse in scrubs next to him as effective as the golden ticket. 

“What are we doing?” he hissed under his breath as they passed by rows of bed. People lay in various reposes, broken bones in casts and people coughing miserably as an IV dripped at their side. 

“We’ll just find out how she is,” Tinker whispered to him as she guided him past all this. It occurred to him they were on an adventure of sorts, and something like fondness squeezed in his chest. It did not escape him how much she was risking, but she seemed to understand how much this meant to him. 

The halls of Northwestern Memorial were quieter here, though people still hurried up and down the hallway. The nurse kept a close grip on him as she steered him through the maze. She stopped at a nurse’s station, chatted for a few minutes about the poor Jane Doe until...

“She’s stabilized so they admitted her upstairs, though poor thing got Dr. Whale,” the nurse at the station said. “If we weren’t short staffed, I’d keep someone in the room with her but-”

The two nurses exchanged knowing looks, and when Tinker ushered him away from the station, her footsteps were a little bit faster. “I thought we were just finding out how she was?” he protested.

“Plans changed.”

He was dizzy from the speed they were going as white tiles and fluorescent lights flashed past. “What’s wrong with Dr. Whale?” he asked. “What is he, a butcher or something?”

“Oh, no he’s a great doctor,” Tinker replied though her voice was pitched low. “Brilliant even though...he has some...unorthodox tendencies that tend to get him in hot water from time to time.” She turned a corner and wavered before making her mind up and turning right. She had loosened her grip on him so he hurried to keep up. “The board just fine him and sentence him to some hours om the ER.”

“What’s so bad about that?” 

Tinker’s eyes were fierce. “He’s fond of the ladies,” she said and cocked her head at him. “A little too fond, rumor has it. No one’s ever caught him at it, but there’s been the whisper or two-”

She didn’t have to say more than that. She pushed open a door to reveal the same doctor he had seen before downstairs in the ER bent over the woman from the tracks. Whale straightened rapidly and tossed them both a filthy look. “Family only!” he barked as Gold pushed past Tinker to the woman’s side.

His stranger had been changed into a hospital gown, her face cleaned and hair combed out of the elaborate updo from this morning. Machines were humming around her, but she was motionless. Gold had her left hand in his before he could think better of it, and was relieved to feel the heartbeat in her wrist strong and steady. He wasn't paying attention to the tense words between the doctor and nurse until -

“What’s going on in here?” The three of them turned like guilty children to face the uniformed officer staring at them in professional disbelief. 

The doctor stepped away from the bed towards the officer, a smarmy smile already in place. “Officer, if you could remove this man from the room?”

The officer’s eyes swung to where Gold was cradling the patient’s hand in his own, but Tinker was faster. “He’s the fiance!” 

All three of the men’s eyes dropped to the ring finger where a diamond was glistening. Gold stared at it, utterly transfixed and at a loss to how he had missed it this morning. 

“It’s even better than that,” Tinker went on as the officer turned back to her. Over his shoulder, her eyes went wide at Gold, a clear signal to keep his mouth shut. There was no need for that, he could barely think. He dropped the woman’s hand and backed away into the corner but there was nothing for it. Tinker continued, “He’s the one who saved her life!”

Before any of them could respond to this, the door flew back open and a jumble of people tumbled into the small room.  “Where is she?” a pixie haired brunette demanded, practically shoving the officer out of her way. 

She had a death grip on a teenage girl, who looked as if she too was suffering from the flu raging through the emergency room downstairs. “Mom, don’t embarrass me,” she muttered.

Two men followed them into the room, and Gold stilled as he tried to determine which was the actual fiance of the woman on the bed. The taller man had a gold wedding band, his coloring the same as the teenager. He had to be the father, though it hardly explained how they were related to the woman on the bed.  None of them had her eyes, or her delicate features.

The father kept a careful distance from the bed. “She’s so pale,” he muttered, his own face turning green. 

This was all too much for the doctor . “What is this? This is a hospital- Family only!”

“We are family.”

This came from the other man in the room, the one with a mess of curly hair and a scarfy styled artfully around his throat. He was confident and assured, and if Tinker’s frank appraisal was any indication, a very handsome man. This had to be the fiance. Gold took a step further back, judging the distance to the door. 

With that cleared up, the woman rounded on Whale. “How is she. What’s happened- they said she fell. What’s going on!”

None of these were actual questions. “You can't come bursting into this unit!” Whale was shouting over them but he was fighting a losing battle. 

“She’ll be alright, won’t she?” the husband asked.

Whale bit down on a sigh but gave in to the inevitable. “She’s in a coma.”

“On Christmas day?” the younger girl asked, and it may have been Gold’s imagination but she looked even paler. 

“Jesus!” the brunette muttered and her husband shot her a warning look. 

No doubt used to this, Whale continued as if no one had said anything. “Her vital signs are strong. Her brain waves are good.”  
  
“Brain waves?” the girl mouthed, but her parents were too caught up in their own worry. 

“I think she’s going to get through it,” Whale concluded. 

“Are you a specialist?” the husband asked but his wife didn’t have time for that.

“How did this happen?”

“She was pushed from the the platform at the train station.” Gold hadn’t meant to speak, but now everyone was staring at him in confusion. His eyes flickered nervously to Tinker who was shaking her head discreetly. 

The brunette narrowed her eyes at him. “Who’s he?” 

The officer looked puzzled. “He’s her fiance,” he replied with a gesture towards the ring on the woman’s finger. 

“Her fiance?”

“Yeah,” the officer said with a glance over at Tinker to confirm this. She quickly schooled her features into an innocent smile. 

“Lacey’s fiance?”

“Lacey’s engaged?” 

“Yeah,” the officer said as he took a hasty step back. “I thought-?”

“No, you don’t understand,” Gold tired to say but his words were lost in the swirl of everyone else’s.

“She would’ve told us,” the brunette said but her voice was uncertain. “Lacey would have told us…”

“Maybe she was busy,” her husband said slowly, as if to convince himself. 

The man by the door shook his head at this. “Too busy to tell us she’s getting married?” he asked with a quirk of his brow. 

“If only Belle were here,” the brunette said as she pinched her nose. 

“Honey, you okay?” Tinker had stepped forward and it was only then that Gold noticed the teen was swaying on her feet. Her eyes were glassy and her face was pale with sweat dotting her temples. It was rather hot in here, he thought, until he saw the metal bracelet on her right wrist. 

A million things crashed down at him at once as the officer asked, “Is she okay?”

Her parents were at her side, lowering her onto the chair by the window. The girl shook her head feebly, but she sank down into it as she fought to breath. Gold saw past her, to another child trying to breath, their traitorous heart failing, eyes scared and tired-  
  
“She’s got a heart problem,” the man by the door said to the officer who was darting worried looks around the room. “On the donor list since she was eight.”

“Ten,” the girl corrected stubbornly from across the room. 

“Nothing wrong with her hearing though,” the man said with a wink. 

The officer, clearly overwhelmed, took a step backwards. “Okay everyone,” he declared in what had to be his official voice in a vain attempt to regain authority in the room. No one paid him a bit of attention. 

“What is he doing here?” the curly haired man asked the officer with a pointed nod towards Gold. 

All eyes swiveled back to Gold, and his mouth went dry. The teen looked up at him in curiosity, and it occurred to him that this girl would been close to Neal’s age. His fists tightened at his side and he caught himself straining to hear the young girl’s heartbeat over the beeping of the monitors and the others breathing. 

The officer hurried to answer, relieved to know the answer to this. “He saved her life.”

This was not what they had been expecting. A hush fell over the room until the only noise was the intercom in the hallway. 

“You saved her life?” the brunette repeated incredulously. 

Gold hurried to explain. “Yeah, yeah but I-”

“I thought she was pushed off a train platform?” the husband asked the officer. 

“He jumped on the tracks,” the officer said with a proud smile. This stopped Gold short, words disappearing from his tongue. 

“You jumped on the tracks?”

“Mom, stop repeating everything,” the girl groaned. 

Doctor Whale frowned at him from across the room and Tinker was wearing a very sheepish look on her face as things escalated. “Okay, look,” Gold said as he held up his hands. “I-I’m sorry, you-you don’t understand.”

“No,” the brunette said, standing to come towards him. He took a step backwards but his back was already against the wall. “I’m sorry,” she continued, unaware of his attempted retreat. “We haven’t...we haven't seen her in a really long time, so we didn’t know.”

“We always wanted her to find the right guy,” her husband said, his hand still on his daughter’s shoulder though he was looking over at Lacey. When their eyes met, there was a warmth and acceptance in them that staggered Gold more than his wife’s apology. 

“I just- I-”

The girl’s wide eyes were green as her eyes flickered over where Lacey lay. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she hurriedly brushed it away. She caught his eye over her mother’s shoulder and rolled her eyes as if to mock her own emotions. He didn’t look away, his heart thundering in his chest as he stared at the small metal bracelet still dangling around her wrist. Whatever he had meant to say disappeared as the girl’s breathing evened out and she smiled up at him. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” the officer said as he cleared his throat. “I do need to ask Mr. Gold here some questions…”

Grateful for the escape, Gold hurried out the door with Tinker close on his heels. The officer lingered for a moment as the family started talking over each other again and the two of them hurried towards the elevator.

‘Shit,” Tinker whispered as they turned back to watch the family through the open door. “That was intense.”

He almost agreed with her until he remembered the entire scene had been thoroughly her fault. “Why did you say that?” Gold demanded. “I’m not her fiance!”

Tinker closed one eye and bit her lip. “I know!” she groaned. “I just said that so you could stay until they found her actual family! It was going to be a misunderstanding, and what with you in shock-”

“Stop saying I’m in shock,” he grumbled. He put his head in his hands and tried to think but all her could see were bright green eyes staring up at him and the trust and relief that had been so naked on everyone’s faces.  “What am I going to do?”

Tinker shrugged helplessly. “I...I don’t know,” she admitted. 

He raked a hand through his hair and sighed. “I’ll just tell them the whole thing’s a misunderstanding.”

“Excuse me, nurse?”

They both jumped and spun guilty around to find the curly haired man from Lacey’s friends standing just behind them. “Is there a pharmacy in the hospital?”

It took Tinker a moment to hear what he had said. “Oh, yeah,” she hurried to say with a shake of her head. “What...what do you need?”

“It’s for Emma,” the man replied with a jerk of his head back towards the room. “She needs some nitroglycerin.”

“Oh, for her heart problem?” Tinker said, and her eyes fluttered to Gold.

“Problem?” the man chuckled, though there was no humor in it. “Try problems.” His eyes swung to Gold now and grew serious. “You know something?” he said quietly. “I think you saved her life.”

“Lacey’s?” 

He shook his head. “Emma’s. They didn’t tell us much when they called...they just said she fell. We didn’t realize it was this serious until…”

Silence fell between them. “I'll take you down to the pharmacy,” Tinker suggested. 

“Thanks,” the man said with another smile and the two of them disappeared into the elevator leaving Gold standing alone in the middle of the hall. 

\--

Christmas afternoon found Gold sitting in the waiting room down the hall with Lacey French’s closest friends. The Blanchards were the closest thing Laey French had to a family and they had insisted Gold join them to await the doctor’s assessment. 

“We met in college, the five of us,” Mary Margaret Blanchard explained as her daughter fell asleep on her shoulder. She idly stroked the girl’s long blonde hair. “In English Lit 101.”

“We got paired up to write about Snow White,” David confirmed with a chuckle.

“Lacey and I had Alice in Wonderland,” Jefferson sighed as he stretched his legs. 

Gold, curious as to their relationship, perked his ears up only to hear Mary Margaret mumble under her breath. “Fitting.”

Before Gold could wonder what she meant, her daughter stirred. “Hey honey,” she whispered. “How you feeling?’

“Fine, Mom,” the girl mumbled as she peeled herself away. “Any updates?’

Jefferson shook his head. “They said the swelling went down but they want to keep her sedated until they can assess the damage.”

Emma nodded morosely, a flicker of guilt on her face. Gold stayed silent where he sat beside Jefferson.” What were you guys talking about?” she asked as she looked from adult to adult. “I heard you mention Wonderland?”

“How we all met,” her father answered and Emma wrinkled her nose.

“Not that story again.”

“What do you mean not again?” Mary Margaret teased. “You used to love that story. How your father dressed up as Prince Charming that Halloween and asked me to the ball-”

“It was a sorority dance,” Emma corrected with a roll of her eyes. They landed on Gold and she perked up. “What about you?” she asked.

“Me?” Gold repeated, taken unaware by her interest.

“How did you meet Lacey?” 

“Honey,” Mary Margaret whispered. “He doesn’t want to talk about that now.”

“Why not?” Emma said with a frown. “We could all use a nice story.”

“How do you know it was nice?” Jefferson drawled, and both the Blanchards colored slightly. David shook his head as if warning him off. Gold looked from one to the other, feeling as if he was missing something crucial. 

“Of course it was nice,” Emma was saying over them. She seemed to be picking up the same tension Gold was and her voice wavered. “Why wouldn’t it be nice?”

“What happened to the other guy?” David was asking his wife. “What’s his name? The one she met at the bar?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Emma demanded but her parents were having their own conversation now.  
  
“Keith Nottingham,” Mary Margaret spat. 

“Mary Margaret..." Jefferson looked pointedly at Emma. “She has a nice guy now,” his eyes flickered to Gold, “ doesn’t she?”

“Did you steal her from that guy?” Emma demanded and her voice was breathless, but this time it was out of excitement. Her eyes were hopeful and her mother softened in turn. “I bet it was love at first sight.” Jefferson chuckled and Emma shot him a look. “I have a sense about these things,” she confided to Gold. “I call it my super power.”

She lit up, the same way Neal had whenever someone encouraged him to talk about his beloved trains. “Oh?” he asked, encouraging her to continue. The nitroglycerin had helped improve her color, but worry still weighed down her shoulders and the occasional look in her eye made Gold think there was more bothering her than just Lacey’s accident.

“Was she visiting you at work?” Emma asked the question everyone had been too polite to ask. “Did you guys meet there?”

“Emma,” her father protested, but it was a weak one. He glanced over at Gold with a sheepish shrug, and it occurred to him he wasn’t going to get out of this.

“I..uh..” he said, and the last thing he wanted to do was lie to these people, but Emma’s medical bracelet glinted up at him and he cast about for what to do. The time for explaining was long gone. The police officers had taken his statement, but no one had dreamed of letting him leave, certain he wanted to be there to hear what the doctors had to say. 

“What was it about her that, you know, first struck you?” 

He realized now, too late, they had been waiting to grill him. From the small things they had said, all carefully coded to not alarm Emma, it seemed Lacey French had put some distance between herself and her unorthodox family. 

“Her eyes,” he answered honestly. The bright blue had stayed with him throughout the long day. He had tried not to openly stare at Lacey, though she was easily one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. He could too easily remember the feel of her in his arms, and some small part he had thought long dead had seemingly awakened in all the excitement. This should have embarrassed him, but the group seemed delighted to hear this. 

Jefferson leaned back on the couch. “She’s a beautiful woman,” he said casually, but there was a hook underneath it. “You guys meet online or-?”

“Jefferson!” 

“Shh!” Emma demanded. “Let him tell it.”

There was no escaping it, so Gold took a deep breath. “Well...the first time I saw her…Everything….just fell away. She was so...fierce and unafraid,” he shook his head. “I just knew my life would never be the same.”

It was the truth, God help him. Fond smiles lifted the corners of everyone’s mouth. David leaned over to pat him on the back. Gold started at this casual touch, but relaxed as the others began to talk about Lacey’s fearlessness, her bravery and her tenacity. He settled back as they spoke so fondly of the woman they thought he was in love with, and he found himself content just to listen. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone's curious, I chose Tinker Belle as the nurse character because I always liked the idea of her knowing Neal and I think the two of them would have been fast friends based of their time in Neverland together in canon. And Whale being a slightly creepy doctor because Whale. 
> 
> Second chapter and still no Belle, but the character of Jack doesn't appear in the movie until a quarter through, so I can promise everyone she does show up in chapter four. Following the movie, next chapter we'll have a visit to the hospital room at midnight, a talk on porch stairs, and Ice Capades.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time Gold made it back to his apartment, it was nearly midnight. He had politely declined the Blanchards invitation to come over for some semblance of dinner and too tired to think, he had hailed a taxi. The exhaustion of the day hung heavy on his shoulders but his heart lightened slightly as the taxi made its way north, towards Neal. 

The cemetery was empty and dark by the time the taxi rolled up to the gates. The driver looked over his shoulder, and something about Gold must have been truly pathetic, because the driver offered to go down the street to get dinner and come back by in an hour to bring him back to the city. Gold accepted gratefully, too tired and cold to care about the driver’s pity. 

Graves were adorned with Christmas paraphernalia. Poinsettias were scattered on every other grave, though most were frozen. Gold had grabbed a bouquet from the hospital gift shop, and he stopped at Daniel’s just long enough to lay a handful on the cold earth.

He made his way to Neal’s grave, and like always, a fresh wave of grief rolled over him. This had not gotten easier over the years, but he closed his eyes against the pain. “Merry Christmas, son,” he murmured. Gold traced his fingers alongside the edge of the gravestone before he laid the flowers gently at the base. “Sorry I’m late, but it’s quite the story…”

He told his son about the fierce beauty, how he had jumped down on the tracks (“I know, son, I know.”) that Nurse Tinker hadn’t forgotten either of them and all about Emma Blanchard. Gold had no doubt his son would have been taken with the girl. He let himself wonder how different it would have been if there had been someone Neal’s own age who would have understood what it was like to be dying before they had actually lived. He only peeled himself away when the taxi lights swung back across the cemetery to take him back to the city.

As Gold let himself into the apartment building, he cupped his hands and blew into them. It was nearly as cold in here as it was outside but he pulled his scarf away from his mouth before he began to climb up the stairs. Before he could even make the first step, the door to the Mills swung open. Gold half expected Regina but instead Selena popped out. “There you are!” she pouted. “I’ve been waiting for you all day!”

He didn’t wait to hear what she had to say. Sleep was already beginning to tug the corners of his eyes, so he sluggishly continued to trudge up the stairs. “Uh...yes, well Merry Christmas, Selena.”

It didn’t dissuade her. “Tomorrow night!” she called up after him.

“What?”

“Ice capades,” she said and held up two tickets towards him. She wiggled them at him before wiggling her hips. “I know a guy.”

Gold let out a long, slow exhale before he turned and headed upstairs without another word. 

His apartment was quiet. The only light was from the streetlamp outside his window as he locked the door behind him. On the mantle, pictures of Neal smiled at him in greeting but his time at the grave was still too fresh for them to be welcoming. 

He wandered into the bedroom, pulling one boot off and then the other before he sat heavily on the bed, staring out the newly fixed window. His mind began to churn through the events of the day until his exhaustion had vanished. He gingerly reached up to his tie, but could not bring himself to loosen it. Instead, he stared down at it and the bright blue of it made him recall Lacey French’s startled expression as she had fallen backwards down onto the tracks. 

The doctors were confident of a full recovery. A few more days to ensure the swelling went down, and they would be able to wean her off the sedatives that kept her under. What would Lacey have to say when she woke up to find herself engaged to an old man?

She wouldn’t laugh at him. Gold didn’t know how he knew that but he did. Still. He lowered his head into his hands as the severity of his lies bore down on him. Her fiance! What had he been thinking…. he should have pulled the Blanchards to the side, explained….but things had happened so fast and they had been so relieved to know someone had loved Lacey enough to jump onto the tracks to save her…  
  
That she hadn’t been alone.

At this thought, he stood, and reached for his boots. He was back out the door and on his way to the hospital- all exhaustion forgotten.

\--

Northwestern Memorial was never quiet, but at night, it took on a different atmosphere. Gold made  his way through the maze of wards and back to Lacey’s ward.  The night nurses, already low on staff due to Christmas, were nowhere to be seen; it was easy enough to duck around the lone nurse at the desk when she went to answer the phone.

Visiting hours were technically over, but Gold knew the ways of the hospital better than most. He made it to Lacey’s room with ease, only to linger awkwardly in the doorway. Her color had improved greatly since this morning, but he was surprised all over again by her beauty. “Hi,” he said and then flushed a bit.

Gold moved to stand inside the room, his hat clutched in his nerveless fingers. Lacey lay as still as Sleeping Beauty, as picturesque as the lavish illustrations in the fairy tale books. It reminded him of how much Neal had loved fairy tales when he was little, though he had quickly grown out of them. Gold hadn’t wondered why at the time, but now... Perhaps Neal had seen how his parents were, how curt they were- more roommates than a couple, more strangers than friends and had figured out on his own that true love was just make believe. 

The machines at Lacey’s side beeped soothingly and the steady beat calmed his own racing heart. It was odd to just stand here and look at her. Now that he had arrived, he couldn’t help but wonder why he had come. To apologize? To explain? 

He sat down beside Lacey, careful not to touch her, but unable to pull his eyes away. “Bet you’re wondering….what I’m doing here in the middle of the night, huh? Well, I-I thought I should introduce myself. My name’s Gold- sorry...uh it’s Truman R.S. Gold.” He twisted his face at the pretentiousness of it. He had gone by just Gold since he had hit puberty. 

He took another deep breath. He had spoken more today than he had in five years, and his voice was raspy and hoarse. “I think you should know your friends think we’re engaged.” 

He beat an nervous stratco on his thigh. “I’ve been married before,” he told her, unsure why the ghost of Milah was so close to him tonight. Last he had heard, she had married a serviceman and moved to a Naval base in Ireland. Or that had been her excuse when she had told him she wasn’t coming to the funeral. He hadn’t thought of her since, though to be fair, he hadn’t thought of any woman much. 

Until now.

“Look, what I really came here...to tell you was that, um…I didn’t, I didn't mean for this to happen.” Tears were prickling his eyes. He looked up the ceiling as if the answers were written there. “I don’t know what to do,” he croaked. “I mean if, if you were awake, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

He flinched. “Oh, god, not that I’m blaming you! Sorry!”

He sighed. “It’s just that...do you know I had a son? No, I suppose you couldn’t know considering we just met. His name was Neal, and he...he was wonderful. Smart, sure, but he was kind. He never met a stranger, and he loved to help people and...he loved the L.” The corners of his mouth turned up as he told her all about Neal. “I thought he’d grow out of it but no...he just started to learn about how it worked, and how it operated and God, he could bore people to tears, but they would just sit there listening to him rattling off everything he knew about them. One - one guy stayed on the train with us all afternoon once, just listening to Neal.”

That had been a special day. Gold had worried his son was monopolizing the gentleman, until they had paused for lunch and Neal had offered half his sandwich to his new friend who had taken it gratefully. He told them over PB&J that his wife had just died, and he hadn’t wanted to go home to his empty house. Gold hadn’t quite understood that then, but he did now. 

He told her more about Neal. How he had never forget a face, and remembered everyone's’ birthday. He even told her the story about the time they fought and Neal ran away from home for two hours but only got as far as Mrs. Darling’s house on the corner. He told her everything he could remember and then….“I lost him to...heart failure about five years ago this fall. He had...well he had gotten a new heart but his body...rejected it.”

He blew through his nose to avoid the pricking of tears but it was like trying to stop the tide from rising. “Ah...um. The doctors said...there wasn’t anything to be done. That it happened sometimes….but ah, you’d have liked him.Everyone did. You know, Emma kinda reminds me of him. and not just because...you know.’

‘When he...I didn’t want to replace him,” he tried to explain, all too aware he was doing a terrible job of this, but something inside him pushed the words out. He hadn’t spoken to anyone, really spoken to them about any of this before, not even Regina, but something in him thought Lacey would understand. Her voice this morning had woken him up, she had drawn him out of his shell and somehow now his life had people in it again and he wasn’t sure if that was a miracle or some cosmic joke. 

For a moment, let himself wonder if she needed someone as much as he did. The diamond flashed on her finger as if to mock him for his romantic flight of fancy. “Who are they?” Gold asked with a nod towards her ring. “Where were they this morning?”

Lacey did not answer, and he was no closer to discovering any foreseeable end to this mess. 

“None of my business, I guess.”

Maybe they had a fight. Had she stormed out of some apartment this morning in last night’s clothes...or gone out on Christmas Eve to escape being alone...he didn’t know but he found it...odd that somewhere someone wasn’t tearing the city apart looking for her. Isn’t the first place desperate people checked hospitals and police stations?  

“It’s just...I’ve been by myself for so long,” he confessed to her. “I thought I’d just...die alone...I looked forward to it. I know how that sounds. I would have given every year I have left to my son..but God doesn’t bargain.”

He fell silent. In the background, the machines continued their whir, lights flashing as the gentle hum lulled him deeper into contemplation.

“I bet you have no idea what that’s like,” he said with a deep breath. He let it all out on a deep exhale, and more words came tumbling out with it. “Your friends...your family were here telling me stories about you...about all your adventures and scrapes…”

In truth, Lacey was more like someone out of a story. Quick witted, sharp as a tack, and fearless, she had three successful careers in the past few years, was widely traveled and had a fondness for dive bars that often led her to the wrong parts of town only to befriend the entire establishment within the evening. 

“I’ll bet you never spent the night talking to someone in a coma,” he finished with a wry chuckle followed by a deep sigh. He leaned back into the chair and closed his eyes, and finally fell silent. The noise and bustle of the hospital faded away as he disappeared into his thoughts. 

Gold was none the wiser to the man out in the hallway who had just overheard everything he had said. Jefferson lingered for a moment more, before he slowly turned and headed back towards the elevator. 

\--

“Bryan Lynch. Mr. Bryan Lynch, please call Amber Lynch at-”

Gold startled awake with a stabbing crick in his neck. “Oh, God,” he hissed at his own stupidity. Sunlight streamed into the small private room, and the unmistakable noise of rush hour traffic was drifting up from the street below. Thankfully he was off today, but he hadn’t meant to fall asleep... 

Fumbling for his jacket, he nearly knocked over a pitcher of water. He spared a moment to wonder if Tinker had been by. She had promised to keep an eye on Lacey, considering she had landed him in this whole mess... He tossed a goodbye over his shoulder and while Lacey did not respond, he offered her a small smile before he turned to leave. 

Only to run directly into the Blanchards. 

Startled, Mary Margaret held out her hands to catch him before they bounced off each other. To his surprise, her face lit up in delight. “Gold!”

David clasped a hand on his shoulder. “We didn’t know you were here!”

Gold stuttered a greeting, his ears pink.  Mary Margaret looked over his shoulder into the room. Realization flickered over her face, and if possible, she looked even more happy to see him. David too had noticed the chair by the bedside.“ Were you here all night?”

“You’re like me,” Emma said, slipping from behind her parents to join them in the room. “I can sleep anywhere.”

Gold stifled a smile as her parents rolled their eyes over her head. They pushed their way past him into the room, somehow carrying him back by Lacey’s side.”How’s Lacey?” David asked him, as if Gold was the expert on all things Lacey. 

Mary Margaret leaned down to peer at her friend’s face. “She’s got more color.”

“Well, it was...it was great to see you guys again,” Gold mumbled, all too aware what they must be thinking, what they would think when the truth came out. “I.. should be going.”

Mary Margaret looked up at her husband and her eyes bulged a bit in silent communication. David looked on in confusion before Emma elbowed her father. “Tell him.” David shook his head and Emma rolled her eye. “Go on. Tell him.”

“Oh yeah!” David said and his face split into a relieved grin. “We didn’t get to celebrate Christmas so...uh…”

“It would be nice if you could join us,” Mary Margaret finished. 

“Oh,” Gold said. “Ah...I would love to...but I..I can’t.”

“Belle’s going to be there,” Emma said as if that might change his mind. 

“That’s right!” David exclaimed. “You haven’t met Belle yet!”

Gold faintly remembered them mentioning Belle, Lacey’s sister. She had been conspicuously absent from the stories they told the evening before, as if she didn’t exist in the same world her sister did. 

“No, not yet,” he said with a nod. Nor did he plan to. This had gone far enough already. He needed to take a step back, distance himself, make it easier when the truth came out. 

“She’ll be so excited to meet you,” Emma said before a frown fell over her face. She turned to her mother. “Does Belle know Lacey’s engaged?”

Neither parent answered her. David just put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “So, you’ll come tonight?” he asked Gold.

It was not a smooth change of topic, but it was effective. Gold shook his head. “I really shouldn't. I have work in the morning.”

Mary Margaret shook her head and thrust a contact book into his hands. He blinked down at it in confusion. “Put your phone number and address in there. David will call you and talk you into it.”

Behind her, David nodded an affirmative. Caught off guard, Gold laughed. “Okay,” he said and shook his head ruefully as he jotted it down. Now, they had his name, his number and his address. Easier for them to file a police report, he figured. 

“Here’s my card,” David said and he fished it out of his pocket. It was a nice print, though it was bent at the corners and colored with age. “I’m in the estate furniture business,” he explained when he saw Gold’s quizzical look. “I buy furniture from dead people,” he further clarified as Gold flipped the card over to read Blanchard & Co. 

“Right,” Gold said because he didn’t know what else to say. “Well, I have it.” He slid into his jacket pocket. “Bye.”

“See you later,” Emma chimed as her parents echoed his goodbyes. 

He couldn’t help the corners of his lips turning up so he just nodded. “Bye,” he said again to them all before he escaped the confines of the suddenly too small room. It didn’t occur to him to wonder where Jefferson was. 

He had almost made it to the elevator when someone ran up behind him. “Sir! Excuse me, sir!” 

He turned just in time for an orderly to thrust a cardboard box into his hands.. 

Gold stared down at it, not understanding.. “What is this?” 

The orderly had begun to walk away, but stopped in his tracks to offer an apologetic smile. “Oh, right, sorry, Mr. Gold. Those are your wife’s things.”

Exhaustion and stress had stretched his nerves to the breaking point and sleeping in a chair had not helped. They snapped. “She’s not my wife!” 

Clearly taken aback by Gold’s vehemence, the orderly did his best to stay professional. “Right, I’m sorry. Your fiance.”

“I’ll take it from here, thanks!” 

Tinker had appeared at his side. The orderly made his escape as Gold sputtered incoherently. 

Tinker marched him past all the people in the hallway. “Right this way, Mr. Gold,” she said a little louder than usual for their benefit. “This way, this way!” They made their way into the elevator and the door hissed close behind them. Tinker fell back with a sigh. “That was close,” she said to herself before glaring over at him. “What’s with you?”

“What’s with- what’s with me?” he demanded. “Everyone thinks I’m engaged to some strange woman I’ve never even met-”

“I apologized for that,” Tinker pointed out. “Why are you back here anyways?”

Gold didn’t have an answer for that so he just shook his head. “What am I supposed to do with this stuff?” 

Tinker shrugged. “Take it home for her?” she suggested. “Her purse is in there.”

“Doesn’t she need this for when she wakes up?”

Tinker’s face went funny. “They release stuff to next of kin. Since her family’s not...actually family, you’re the closest thing.” He harrumphed which earned him a smile from the diminutive nurse. “Oh! That reminds me, one of the traveling nurses told me she knew her from Mercy.”

“Lacey?”   


Tinker nodded. “She came in for some…” she cleared her throat delicately, “work.” She moved her hands up in front of her chest and cupped them as if holding two large melons. Gold frowned at her before her meaning hit him and a blush broke out over his cheeks. He turned sharply back to the elevator doors, trying desperately not to think about that. Tinker shrugged.“Apparently your girl is quite ….something.”

Before he could ask what that meant, the door opened and a people began to shuffle on with them. Thankful for the silence, Gold let his shoulders slump as he began to think about the warm, quiet of his apartment and escape from the melodrama his life had become. 

\--

Except his apartment wasn’t an escape. 

He spent the afternoon cleaning up around the house. He fixed the leaky sink and reorganized the pantry spices but the day dragged by. Outside the city was quiet, and the cold curled up into his bones.

By the time dusk rolled around, the apartment was suffocating. Gold sat at the table, the frozen dinner still steaming from the oven. The smell of chemical preserved pasta irritated his nose, and his eyes strayed to the business card he had pinned thoughtlessly on the fridge. Blanchard & Co stared back at him and for the second night in a row, Truman Gold found himself reaching for his boots.

\--

The thirty minute cab ride cost him a pretty penny, but there was something soothing about the quiet streets of La Grange. Gold had lived further north of this suburb once upon a time, but he was familiar enough with this neighborhood to know some street names. It had been light when he left Logan Square but night had fallen. 

The cab slowed to a stop in front of a large white two story house. Christmas lights still twinked on the roof and bushes lining the front of the house. A flight of stairs led up to a red door where  a plastic Santa was illuminated next to a cluster of red poinsettias. The address matched the business card in his hand, but the cozy reality of it was disconcerting. 

Gold’s stomach flipped. It occurred to him he had not called ahead to let the Blanchards know he was coming. He still had time to change his mind and he almost asked the driver to take him back, when there was sharp rap on the other window. Jefferson stood out in the cold, his hands thrust into a large pea coat as he grinned at Gold through the glass.

Caught, Gold unfolded himself from the cab, tipping generously. Jefferson watched this all with a vague smile. “You made it, huh?” Jefferson asked, a rhetorical question as they made their way up the sidewalk. 

“Yeah,” Gold mumbled. The house in front him was nothing but welcoming. Lights shone from the downstairs window and a burst of laughter curled out into the peaceful suburban street to greet them. 

Jefferson paused on the porch, just shy of the door and pulled out a cigar with a wink. “Keep me company?” he asked before wiggling the cigar at him. “I don’t like to smoke in the house.” Not quite ready to face the music, and catching Jefferson’s unspoken command, Gold settled down on the cold steps beside him. “Want one?” Jefferson offered as he reached into his pocket.

Gold shook his head without looking over at him. “Trying to quit,” he said.

Jefferson stilled for a moment before he burst out laughing. He gave him a conspiring nudge of his shoulder before lighting up. The smell of nicotine and tar was sharp and bright before it faded to the cloying scent of tobacco. Jefferson noticed the twitch of Gold’s nose and stopped mid puff. “They don’t bother you, do they?” he asked.

Gold shook his head. “I’m good,” he assured him. 

“Mary Margaret will kill me if I smell like smoke, but if we both do,” he said with another wink. “She won’t say anything.’

‘You know I’m Emma’s godfather?” Jefferson asked him and the change of topic was so abrupt, it took Gold a moment to understand what he had said. 

“Oh?”

Jefferson nodded. “I’m not Catholic but David fudged it over. He donated some folding chairs to Father Sheaīs bingo night.”

Having no idea what he was talking about, Gold nodded along. 

Jefferson’s tone didn’t change but his face grew serious. “You know, being a godfather is very important to Catholics. It means you’re practically part of the family.”

Gold hadn’t mentioned Neal to the Blanchards yesterday, so he had to be careful of what he said next. “Family’s important,” he agreed. “Especially this time of year.” 

He thought of the cemetery scattered with poinsettias, of Regina in her office, and of his one bedroom decorated with photos from the past. With all this talk of family, it was on the tip of his tongue to ask Jefferson about his own, but he refrained. 

The other man must have heard his unspoken question, because he sighed. “I was married,” Jefferson said and his voice was quiet. “I...I had a bit of a gambling problem. Thought I had it under control, could stop whenever I wanted…” he blew air out of his nose. “Until the night my wife was hit by a car on her way home from work. I was at some club...playing two bit poker while our daughter was home alone, scared out of her mind.”

Despite the tragedy he was describing, Jefferson cracked a despairing smile with the cigar clamped between his teeth. “State took my little girl…,” he told him. His voice was calm, like he was discussing the weather. “I tried to find her a few times but her new family...closed adoption. When she turns eighteen...if she’s curious...but…”

Gold didn’t hesitate. “I lost my son,” he said. “Heart defect.”

Jefferson’s brow raised and he glanced at the house behind him. “Really?” 

Gold nodded.

“No kidding,’ Jefferson shook his head and went back to smoking and staring out into the street below. “Was he as brave as his old man?”

Gold snorted. “Brave? Hardly.”

The cigar tip glowed red as Jefferson inhaled deeply. “I don’t know, Gold,” he said as a puff of smoke curle between them. “Jumping on a track is pretty brave. Could have been a live rail.”

“I knew it wasn’t,” Gold assured him. “Neal...Neal  loved the L. He never stopped talking about it, so I know what stations have live rails and which ones don’t and when the express is and when-”

“You know a lot about trains,” Jefferson interrupted. “I get it. Doesn’t change the fact you risked your life to save someone else’s.”

“I couldn’t...just leave her,” Gold attempted to explain.

“Because she’s your fiance,” Jefferson said and it may have been Gold’s imagination, but Jefferson almost said it like it was a question. 

“Because it was the right thing to do.”

“You get a job at the station because of Neal?” Gold blinked as he tried to catch up but Jefferson had already continued speaking. “I work for David. I’m the poor slob who pours over obituaries and shows up the estate sale with flowers for Poor Great Aunt Muriel. Do you like working at the station?”

The changes in conversation were so fast, Gold had to take a moment to figure out what Jefferson had just asked him. “It...it gives me something to do,” he admitted. “I just feel...closer to him there.”

Jefferson nodded. “Yea...well, I hate my job,” he said with a brittle laugh. “But it...gives me something to do,” he repeated. “It was Mary Margaret's idea. She dragged me here one morning, and stuck me in the truck,” he gestured with his thumb to the shadowed driveway to their left. Gold craned his neck out just enough to see a large delivery truck sitting silently. “If I didn’t show up, David would just come by my house and drag me out by the ears. I tried to disappear but Lacey always found me in whatever hole I disappeared down, and Belle was always dropping by unannounced with some new book or recipe…”

Despite the darkness of his story, Jefferson’s face relaxed into a smile. It was the smile of a man who had seen rock bottom and survived to tell about it. “They got me through it...they all did. Then when Emma got sick...my problems didn’t seem so important, you know?’

‘The point is,” Jefferson said and he seemed to be steeling himself. “they took me in as part of their family.” He leveled a look at Gold. “I’d never let anyone hurt them.”

Gold didn’t hesitate. “Neither would I.”

Jefferson stared at him for a second and then nodded, satisfied. “I believe you,” he said and went back to chomping on his cigar. An easy silence fell between them as they both remembered the ones they had lost and the darkness that had filled their lives. 

The cigar had dwindled between Jefferson’s lip when the porch light switched on and Emma burst out the door.“Gold! You came!” she exclaimed and threw her arms around his shoulders where he sat. 

“Hello to you too Emma,” Jefferson muttered fondly as he stood to the side. He deposited his cigar butt safely on a nearby ledge.”Don’t tell your mother,” he added with a wink as Emma wrinkled her nose in disgust at the smell. 

“I won’t tell but you smell like an ashtray.” Emma stopped just inside the doorway. “Mom made her eggnog,” she whispered before disappearing inside.

Jefferson caught Gold’s jacket sleeve with a wink. “Word to the wise...drink soda.”

Emma had hurried ahead to announce their arrive. “Mom! Dad! Jefferson’s here and Gold came!”

The Blanchards’ heads popped out of the kitchen,  twin masks of delighted surprise. Gold waved feebly at them as Jefferson took his coat. The house was warm, a fire crackling in the mantle and a real pine tree nestled in the corner with lights all aglow. Presents were stacked underneath, and there were stockings over the fireplace. Gold made to move into the dining room to join the party when he noticed the stocking tacked on the very end.

Metallic gold spelled out his name as if he too was part of this family. 

          --

Back across town, in the grand Lake Point Towers overlooking the Navy Pier, a dark apartment was interrupted with shrill ringing of the phone. It rang for a moment before the answering machine clicked on, a blue light illuminating the minimalist space.

“This is Lacey,” a mischievous voice purred into the caller’s ear. “Leave a message...and I’ll get back to you.” There was a warm chuckle, a shared secret, and then, “Ciao.”

“Babe, it’s Keith. Listen...Lisbon is gorgeous, you’d love it...but I’m cutting my trip short.” There was a pause. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and...you know, what the hell. You were right. Life’s too short for a long engagement. Let’s get hitched.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Next chapter introduces Belle!


	4. Chapter 4

Over the course of the delayed Christmas festivities, the Blanchards and Jefferson had heaped piles of food onto Gold’s plate, topped his glass with whatever wine was closest to hand, and most importantly, had extended their easy camaraderie to him as if he had always been a part of their lives. By the time they had cleared the table, it did not occur to Gold to head back home to his quiet apartment, nor was it likely the family would have let him. With two missing from their table, Gold filled the obvious, terrible hole. 

By unspoken agreement, they gathered in the living room after dinner.  Emma had unearthed an old photo album and was currently flipping through it, sharing her favorites with Gold. “That’s Lacey on the right,” she said and helpfully pointed at the young woman in the bunny ears. “She went as the March Hare.”

Gold nodded politely, though he would have known it was her without help. The blue eyes he had seen so briefly were crinkled in laughter, and her arms were thrown around someone in a wolf’s mask. 

David leaned over to get a better look. “There’s Belle,” he said and tapped the figure in the wolf’s mask. “She went as the wolf.”

“From Little Red Riding hood,”” Jefferson told Gold before pointing proudly at his younger self. “I was the Mad Hatter,” he told them with a wink. “Complete with top hat and teapot.”

“I’m going to go get my camera,” Emma declared. “We should take a picture for Lacey’s hospital room” She stood up and thrust the album into Gold’s lap before she hurried out of the room. 

Her footsteps pounded up the steps, as Mary Margaret came into the room with a pitcher in her hand. Her eyes lit on the book in Gold’s lap, and her face brightened. “Oh, is that the Halloween party when Jefferson filled that teapot full of tequila?” 

Jefferson and David both turned a shade of green at the word. Gold had to hide a smile behind his hand as David darkly muttered, “Never again.”

Mary Margaret did not bother to hide her smile. “Serves you right,” she said with a sanctimonious sniff.”Pouring shots into teacups. Now, who wants eggnog?’

Before Gold could decline, Mary Margaret had already poured him a glass. As she moved away, Gold’s eyes drifted back down to the photo album in his lap. The little group grinned up at him from the past. Below the picture of Lacey and Jefferson, there was a candid of Mary Margaret and David standing in a corner talking. Both were dressed as royalty, and oblivious to the rest of the world. Both, he noticed, were holding teacups. 

He flipped the page idly while Mary Margaret settled by her husband’s side to find more pictures from the same event. Feeling as if he was prying, Gold deposited the album on the coffee table. All too aware of Mary Margaret watching him, he tried the eggnog, only to find it curdled with rum, undrinkable. He spit it back out into the cup only to look into the wide eyes of his hostess. “Hot,’ he mouthed to her with what he hoped was an apologetic frown.  

Emma saved him by choosing that exact moment to bound back into the room with her camera. “Come on, everybody,” she declared. “Get close to the tree!”

Jefferson stood to take the camera from Emma, who weakly protested as her parents wrangled her in front of the tree. The three made a beautiful family, and when the first flash went off, Gold had on a big as smile as anyone in the room. 

“Now, one with everyone,” Mary Margaret said as she waved Jefferson to come join them. 

Gold began to stand to take the camera from the younger man but Emma was too fast for him. “Gold!” Emma cried. “You too!”

“Yes, come on, Gold!” The whole family beckoned him to join him but he stayed fast. He was warm from the wine, full from the delicious meal, and his head spun pleasantly. 

Jefferson succeeded in setting up what looked like a self timer. Satisfied, he dragged Gold over to the tree. Before Gold could escape, a great flash went off, effectively blinding him. 

“Oh, take it again. I blinked!” Mary Margaret cried. 

“Well,  you’re lucky,” David said with his hands stretched out before him. “I’m blind.”

Gold retreated to the safety of the chair across the room as Emma knelt down by the tree to admire the presents stacked beneath it. “Should we wait for Belle?” she asked her mother before glancing out the window to the dark street outside. 

“I spoke to her before I came over,” Jefferson reported as he settled down into the love seat by the fireplace. “She had just landed at O’Hare but she was going to Memorial to see Lacey.”

Gold went still at this development, but David, misunderstanding, clasped his shoulder. “No news is good news,” he assured him before turning back to the others. “Come on, let’s open some presents.”

“This one’s for me!” Emma cried. A small bow with a name tag dangling from it had been tucked in the lower boughs of the tree. 

“Turn it over,” her mother advised.

A shrill shriek followed as two small studded earrings glinted briefly in the light before they tumbled to the floor. Emma had thrown herself into her mother’s arms. “Pierced? Really? Thank you! Thank you!”

“We’ll go to Walmart Monday,” Mary Margaret said as she pressed her daughter’s hands in her own. There were tears in her eyes and it occurred to Gold that this rite of passage was all the sweeter for this mother and daughter than most.

Emma turned to thank her father but he shook his head. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “If it was up to me, I’d have gotten you a Barbie.”

As the family  passed around presents, Gold sat just at the edge of their family circle, content to watch this unfold. Christmas mornings had always been quiet, intimate moments between the two of them. This makeshift family with their laughter and their antics were as different as night and day. And yet, Gold lingered, unable to tear himself away. 

Jefferson handed David a box, only for Mary Margaret to take it from him to peer down at the label. “Oh, it’s from Uncle Al,” Mary Margaret told him before handing it back. 

David didn’t move to open it. “Who’s Uncle Al?”

“Uncle Al. You know, Uncle Al from Buffalo.”

David continued to stare blankly at her and she huffed. “You remember Al,” she assured him. 

Caught up in this back and forth of the mysterious Uncle Al, Gold didn’t notice Jefferson sliding him a gift. “To Gold from Santa,” Jefferson murmured with a wink. 

Gold’s fingers clasped around the edges of the box. The wrapping paper was the same as the rest, and he almost called Jefferson back to say there had been a mistake, but there was his name on it, clear as day. Gold couldn’t bring himself to open it, overwhelmed by the kindness of these people. They hadn’t even known if he was coming tonight, but they had made sure there was something for him under their tree. They had welcomed him into their lives as if he had always been there, and sitting here with them, it almost felt as if he always had. 

David had unearthed another small box, and Mary Margaret's breath caught as she opened it. “Oh, the gold watch! I love it!” She leaned into to kiss her husband, as Jefferson and Emma ripped into their own presents. “Oh, but it’s so expensive,” she murmured as conscience overtook her but David simply stifled her protest with another kiss. 

“Another bow tie!” Jefferson cried as he hefted it into the air. It was a horrible thing, different splotches of color but he pinned it to his shirt proudly. It went on and on like this, and swept up in the laughter and the camaraderie, Gold didn’t remember to open his own present until all the others were done.

“Well, go ahead, Gold,” Mary Margaret urged him. She wore her new watch proudly and her face was glowing. David had his arm around her, and he echoed her until Jefferson and Emma joined in as well. 

Kicking himself for not having opened it without an audience, Gold gently peeled the paper back to reveal a shirt box. He pulled it open to reveal a framed map of Chicago, except instead of the familiar grids of the city, there were colored lines and a key at the bottom with corresponding colors.

“It’s the one of the first printings of the L map,” David piped up. “I found it in an estate sale a few years back, and decided to hold on to it...we thought...we thought you might like it.”

Gold couldn’t speak around the lump in his throat, so he just nodded as best he could before he went back to tracing the photo with his eyes. The others tactfully started to talk amongst themselves again, but they snuck private smiles at him as he poured over the map, memorized by it. 

Mary Margaret stood abruptly, pulling David up with her. ”Alright, I think it's time for bed,” she said through a terribly faked yawn. 

David blinked in confusion before her meaning became clear. “Oh, right…” he said, and added in his own terrible attempt at a yawn. 

Emma rolled her eyes. “Gross,” she muttered, but her tone was more fond than annoyed.. She turned to Jefferson. “Are you staying over?”

“As if I would miss the traditional Christmas breakfast buffet! The guest room clean?”

Mary Margaret assured him it was, before her eyes fell on Gold. “Oh, let me get the sheets to make up the couch for you.”

“It’s a pull out,” David added helpfully. “Really comfortable.”

“No, no,” Gold said. “I should be going. I have work in the morning-”

He didn’t get to say much else. As he stood up, he staggered sideways. Jefferson caught him with a laugh. “I did warn you about the eggnog.”

“Couch,” Mary Margaret insisted, and Gold wasn’t in much of a state to argue with her though his cheeks burned. He tried to explain he hadn’t had that much to drink, but the family seemed to take it as a personal affront for him not to stay, so by the time Mary Margaret had finished making the couch up for him, he had given into the inevitable.  

His cheek had barely hit the pillow but he was already fast asleep. 

\--

Forty-eight hours.

Forty-eight hours of planes, trains and automobiles. 

Belle French was exhausted in every conceivable way. She supposed in retrospect it had been a stupid idea to spend the holidays on vacation on the other side of the world. As if going to visit some long lost cousins in Sydney was the answer to her problems.

As the taxi driver pulled away back towards the city, the porch light illuminated the hands of her watch to show it was a quarter after midnight. The house was quiet and dark, but Belle had promised to make it for breakfast and it was easier to take a taxi in the middle of the night than risk Chicago’s rush hour traffic in the morning. 

Besides Belle wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to be alone tonight. The sight of Lacey, unnaturally still and quiet, hung like a cloud over her head. Belle had tried to get back to Chicago as fast as she could but traveling internationally most days was long and laborious- over the holidays, with airports packed all the while knowing Lacey was hurt- it had been agony.

Belle pushed her guilt out of her mind to rummage around her purse for the keys. She shoved the dog eared paperback she had been reading on the plane aside, pulled out her passport and only after digging through the pens and receipts at the bottom of her bag did she find her keys. Slipping in the warm house, Belle breathed a small sigh of relief before slowly, ever so slowly, closing the door behind her so that it did not so much as click.  

“Belle!”

As usual, there wasn’t any point in trying to sneak into the house. Emma crashed into her at full speed, wrapping her arms around her as if she might never let go. Belle buried her face in her goddaughter’s hair and breathed deeply in an attempt to stem the tears that had threatened to fall the whole way over here from Memorial. “Hey,” she said, but her voice cracked whether from emotion or exhaustion she couldn’t rightly say.

“Shh, you’ll wake Gold,” Emma warned her with a jerk of her thumb over her shoulder. 

Belle straightened to peer over Emma’s head into the living room. Despite the shadows, she could make out a shape on the pull-out turned away from them. “Who’s Gold?” Belle asked as she took a step towards the mystery man. 

“He’s Lacey’s fiance,” she reminded her. “His name is Truman or something, but we all just call him Gold. Mom said you knew about him?”

The man on the couch had shoulder length hair, which gleamed silver in the porch light streaming through the window. He fit on the short pull out mattress, his frame outlined in blankets. “No, that’s not Lacey’s fiance,” Belle said, but she frowned, unsure of herself. “Is it?”

“You haven’t met him?” 

Belle shook her head. Last time they talked Lacey had mentioned something about a surprise, had hummed a few bars of the wedding march and asked what Belle thought of a spring wedding...but Lacey hadn’t been serious...had she?

“Well, he’s weird, but in a good way,” Emma assured her. “You’ll love him.”

“Uh huh,” Belle murmured as she shuffled to the left to get a better view of this Gold.

Emma yawned, her jaw nearly cracking and it brought Belle back. “Jefferson in the guest room?” Belle guessed.

“Yup, so Mom made up the spare bed in my room for you,” Emma told her as she took her hand. “Come on, you can tell me about Australia until we fall asleep.”

With that, Emma tugged her down the hallway after her but Belle was too busy looking over her shoulder at her Lacey’s fiance.

\--

When Gold woke up, he didn’t know where he was. The sun had filtered through the blinds, slanting across his face. He sat upright, groggy and discombobulated before he remembered. He was at the Blanchard’s house out in La Grange and he had to work in...he checked his watch...two hours. He had the mid shift today, which gave him just enough time to go home and wash up before he reported back to work for the first time since the accident. 

The stocking on the mantle with his name on it stared back at him, as did the small box he had laid reverently by his shoes. He padded over to the telephone on the corner desk, and dialed the taxi service for a pickup. Once that was done, he took his time in dressing. His trousers were wrinkled from having slept in them and his fingers were clumsy as he buttoned up his shirt. He fiddled with his cufflinks and the tie, playing the night over and over again in his mind. Everytime he started to think it was all a dream, he would look over at the stocking bearing his name. 

Guilt started to bubble up in his chest in the light of day. He shouldn’t have come, he shouldn’t have stayed, he shouldn’t have gone back to the hospital-

A litany of what he shouldn’t have done accompanied him as he folded up the blankets, unfitted the sheets and carefully stacked everything. He had just finished when the taxi slowly rolled to a stop outside. He had asked them not to honk, hoping for a quiet getaway but he would have to hurry. No taxi driver waited longer than a minute to start honking, no matter if they had been asked to or not. 

He put the framed print under his arm, and with one last look around, he prepared to leave the Blanchard's house forever. For one night, he had been part of their family, and even that had been more than he had deserved. He moved out into the hallway, hurrying towards the front door before anyone woke up when-

“Good morning.”

Gold nearly dropped the picture as he spun around to face whoever else was awake at this hour. When his eyes met blue, he stopped breathing. “Lacey?”

The blue eyes crinkled. “Ah, no,” they said before the woman unfolded from her seat on the stairs to join him by the door. Her head cocked to one side as if assessing him. “I scared you,” she said softly though there was no hint of an apology. 

“No,” he said but then, “yes,” he admitted with a self conscious smile. There was no wound on her right temple, and no ring on her left hand. “Good morning, Belle,” he murmured for who else could she be? She was the spitting image of her twin sister. 

A flicker of surprise covered her face. “Um, I guess I don’t remember meeting you,” she confessed. She narrowed one eye at him, trying to place him.

“Well, it’s probably because we never met.” He pitched his voice low to avoid waking up the rest of the household. 

“That might have something to do with it,” Belle agreed, matching his volume. They had stepped closer to each other to better hear, and Belle’s mug was now directly underneath his nose, the rich aroma of tea curling up to him. Behind her on the stairs, a book lay forgotten. She followed his eyes over her shoulder and sighed. “Jet lag,” she explained as she hoisted the cup up as evidence. “Couldn’t fall asleep.”

Gold was on the verge of asking her what she was reading when the driver outside took this time to decide enough was enough. The driver leaned on the horn and they both jumped as the shrill scream echoed through the otherwise silent house. “Ah, cab,” Gold said with a shake of his head. “I have to go. Work.”

“Right,” Belle replied though there was an inside joke lingering in her eyes. 

“I’m really...I’m really late,” he tried to explain but his words were not coming out right. “Cause I have to go.”

Her face broke into a grin and he ran straight into the doorframe. “Oh! I...it was nice to meet you, Belle. So, goodbye.”

He turned to flee, getting the door open just barely when-

“Gold.”

The gig was up. He inhaled sharply and whirled around. “Okay, look I-I know that I-”

“Hey.”

He stilled, half in and half out of the doorway. The frigid morning air at his back and the warmth of the house beckoning him back inside to where Belle stood watching him. “Hmm?’

“Welcome to the family.”

“Oh,” he said and tried to think of what to say to his now apparent sister-in-law-to-be. “Thank you,” he decided.

The driver honked again, having caught sight of him in the doorway. The driver was all too familiar with lovers lingering in doorways to have any patience with them. 

Gold mumbled a goodbye, and like the coward he was, he ran. Only in the safety of the cab, a few streets between him and the Blanchard house did Gold spare a moment to wonder why no one had mentioned the fact that the French sisters were identical twins. 

\--

“So, who is this Gold?” Belle asked as Mary Margaret shoveled bacon onto her plate.

“He’s your sister’s fiance,” David answered between bites of his waffle. Jefferson reached over him to grab the syrup as Emma frowned down at her egg whites.

“Mom, come on, just one more slice of bacon,” she pleaded. “It’s Christmas.”

“It’s December 27th,” Mary Margaret corrected her.  “And the doctor said to stick to the diet.”

“Shouldn’t there be exceptions for dying children?” Emma mumbled and the entire room went deadly silent.

“You’re not...dying,” Mary Margaret managed from where she stood with her back to them at the sink. “The doctors said-”

“Come on, Mom,” Emma interrupted. “Gold’s not here. We don’t have to pretend like we all don’t know it’s going to be me in that hospital room soon-”

“Enough,” David declared and his voice was harsh though it was fear that hardened it, not anger. 

Emma, on the verge of arguing, opened her mouth, but Belle beat her to it. “You’d think if Lacey was getting married, she would have announced it in the Tribune,” she pointed out with a nod towards the paper on the table. 

“That’s the Sun Times,” Emma corrected, though she was dipping her toast in the eggs. 

Ignoring that, Belle pressed onwards. “Okay, so why did he sneak out this morning? He couldn't stay for breakfast?”

“He has a job,” Mary Margaret reminded her. “You know, at the station where he saved your sister’s life?”

Unable to find an argument with that, Belle retreated to picking at the fruit on her plate. “Gold,” she said to herself, unable to let the image of the man from this morning go. Something about him clung to her in a way she couldn’t shake, and it bothered her.“Who goes by their last name anymore?”

“His first name is Truman,” Jefferson replied from where he was cutting up his french toast. “I’d go by Gold too.”

“Didn’t you meet him?” Mary Margaret asked as she sat down. Her plate was a mirror image of her daughter’s, fruit, egg whites and toast. Across from her, Emma’s shoulders slumped in embarrassment from her earlier fit of pique though the teenager did not bother to apologize. 

It was Belle’s turn to avert her eyes. “I..uh..I haven’t seen Lacey much lately,” she confessed. In fact, it had been the main reason Belle had decided to go to Australia in the first place. The two of them, though identical, had always been...different and somewhere in the last few years, the distance had grown until not even their twin connection could span it. “She mentioned...she hinted at it but I didn’t…”

Mary Margaret reached over to cover her hand. “He’s a really good guy,” she assured her. “Just give him a shot.”

Emma held up her clean plate. “Mom, can I go watch TV for a bit?” 

Mary Margaret nodded. As the teen deposited her dish into the sink, the entire table looked the other way as she liberated a donut from the platter on the counter and disappeared into the living room with her contraband.

David leaned over to plop two pancakes on his wife’s plate and speared some of the pineapple from hers to pop in his mouth with a wink. Used to this silent communication between them, Belle wondered what was so bad about her sister finding someone to love her like David loved Mary Margaret. It wasn’t as if she was jealous...Lacey had always been the favorite. Even side by side at a bar, men just gravitated to Lacey, they always had. 

And Gold wasn’t the kind of guy Lacey would have even given the time of day to. He was quiet and sweet and bumbling- and a handsome older man, a voice supplied for her, though she tried to ignore it.

“He’s good for her, don’t you think?” Jefferson added with a quirk of his brow. “You always said Lacey needed someone to ground her.”

“The man saved her life,” David said. “As far as we’re concerned, he’s already family.”

“Do you think they’ll get married right away?” Mary Margaret asked, and her eyes flickered to where the living room where canned laughter indicated Emma was watching sitcom reruns. 

“Knowing Lacey I’m surprised they didn’t elope,” David chuckled.

“She really didn’t tell you guys?” Belle pressed.

Jefferson put down his fork. “No, but it’s Lacey. We all love her but she can be....”

“Selfish,” Mary Margaret supplied.

“Narcissistic,” Belle agreed.

“Insensitive,” Jefferson finished with a pointed look at the two of them. “Maybe this whole...thing is going to be a wake up call for her.”

“One can only hope,” David sighed with a look at where his daughter had sat earlier. 

When the diagnosis had come… childhood dilated cardiomyopathy...it had been hard on everyone. Mary Margaret and David had put a hold on their plans for a second child, and put all their time, energy and money into treatment for Emma. Jefferson had taken up the reins of David’s business, and Belle...Belle had resigned from her job at the publishing house and gotten a steadier position at an accounting firm so she could be at the hospital in a moment’s notice. 

But Lacey...Lacey hadn’t been able to deal with it. She had distanced herself from them all, slightly at first but as Emma grew weaker, Lacey grew even more distant until her own twin was nothing more than a voice on the phone, an occasional text, and a poorly written email despite living in the same city. 

Torn between being the familiar feeling of being furious at her sister and the guilty agony at the idea Lacey was at this very moment alone in the hospital, Belle stood. “I should go,” she said as calmly as she could. “I should get back to the hospital .”

She ignored the looks of her oldest, dearest friends, and went to say goodbye to Emma. She couldn’t face the knowing looks on their faces, or the truth in her own heart. 

She hadn’t been there when Lacey needed her.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! First of all, thanks to Prissy for being a great sounding board as usual. Her story We've Never Met, is one of my favorites and i tied in a little shout out to it here.
> 
> Also, yay Belle! I tweaked the character of Jack for Belle slightly. Jefferson now has the "i really don't want this job" storyline while Belle's focuses more on her relationship with her twin sister. POV will switch between Gold and Belle depending on the focus of the scene, but excited to jump start this part of the story. 
> 
> Thanks as always for reading and commenting. Most of my readers know I am rubbish at proofing, because I just start editing the story and add more typos than I fix. If you see something, say something. It's a bad habit of mine, and I appreciate everyone who puts up with it. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's prissygirl's birthday and that means I write her something. Sadly, life made it a little difficult to get time this year, but since this story was her prompt/request, I hope you'll all join me in wishing her a happy birthday and enjoy my small gift to her of a new chapter (that I didn't ask her to proofread first)

The wind roared in from Lake Michigan to chase the inhabitants of Chicago around the streets in the bleak days between Christmas and New Year. As the festive decor came down and the spirit of the holiday disappeared for another three hundred and sixty days, people either stayed inside or if they had to brave the elements, they quickly disappeared into the backs of taxis, and into the crush of the L.

Which meant the Transit Authority managers in their infinite wisdom doubled up on shifts, including the dreaded mid-shift. The five-hour shift covered the latter half of the morning shift so the early crew could eat lunch, and then cover the quiet hours of the early afternoon before the evening shift arrived just in time for rush hour.

Unfortunately, the Tribune had chosen the slow days at the end of the year to publish an article on the heroics of a local transit worker, Truman Gold, who had rescued a woman from the tracks on Christmas Morning, who in fact, happened to be his fiancée.

Coworkers who had never tried to speak to him before were now vying to be confidants in the hopes of hearing the thrilling story of his Christmas Day rescue first hand. Someone had even hung the police tape in the booth like a medal of honor. Gold promptly took it down, but it did not stop the tide of mindless chatter, borderline inappropriate questions, and sheer awe of his colleagues. Gold simply gritted his teeth, ignored them, and counted down the time left in his shift.

Understandably, by the time he finished his shift, Gold was thoroughly exhausted. He rode the line back to his neighborhood without further issue and managed to slip into Storybrooke Apartments before either of the Mills sisters could notice. Selena may not have heard about his daring deed, but there was no chance Regina had missed the article. With an interest in politics that bordered on obsession, Regina subscribed to every newspaper in Chicago and happily spent her mornings reading them all over breakfast. It was only a matter of time before Regina came knocking.

In the relative safety of his apartment, Gold pulled his scarf and hat off and deposited them neatly on the hook by the door. He kicked off his boots, reveling in the pleasure of wiggling his toes against the carpet, before hanging his coat up; everything in its place. Fastidious by nature, he had once had quite a collector streak. He had spent the majority of his youth collecting antiques and first editions, displaying them….but those had been the first to go when the hospital bills had started to pile up. Now, his apartment was empty.

Still, there were things to be done. Gold ran through a list of chores he had been putting off, most of which involved dusting when there was a curt knock on the door. Gold winced, and though he remained perfectly still, the knock repeated itself, firmer this time.

There was no use in delaying the inevitable. Gold pulled the door to let in Regina, who had a copy of the Tribune clutched in her hand. “Where,” she demanded as the paper rustled and crinkled in her ironclad grip “have you been?”

“It’s a long story,” Gold replied with a shrug as he escaped into the kitchen.

Regina followed after him, already opening the paper to read out the article he had already heard a hundred times today.”Local Transit Worker Plucks Fiancée from Certain Death: A Chicago Christmas Miracle,” she read before clearing her throat. “It’s part of their theme on the dangers of our public transit these days, but they don’t bother to mention the local government isn’t financing any of the needed renovations.”

Gold made an interested noise as he unearthed a bottle of whiskey from for Regina’s visits. “So, Mayor Daley hasn’t made a response to the accusations of gentrification in the northern district?”

The mere mentions of politics would get Regina going on a rant that would last at least an hour, but drop Mayor Daley’s name, a proper Chicago political prince, and Gold was ensured at least a two-hour discussion on the demerits of a Democratic-controlled city.

Unfortunately for him, even Mayor Daley couldn’t save him now.

“Nice try,” Regina said as propped herself up against the fridge. “Now, where is it...ah yes, if I skip the sentimental nonsense about the Christmas spirit and the holidays- “Local Transit Worker Truman Gold, a veteran of the Randolph-Wabash station, heroically threw himself upon the tracks in the face of the oncoming express’,” Gold thrust the tumbler of whiskey into Regina’s hands as she concluded, “to save his fiancée.’”

“What do you want me to say,” he asked as he took refuge in the whiskey. “It must have been a slow news day.”

“You jumped on the tracks?” Regina repeated as she dropped the paper on the counter beside her. “Are you insane?”

“There’s not a live wire-”

“You could have been killed!”

“What was I supposed to do? Leave her there?”

“Your fiancée?” His jaw tensed to the point he could have chewed through steel, but before he could respond, Regina’s focus moved away from him and his fiancée. “What is that?”

Gold had to look over his shoulder to see what had caught Regina’s attention. It was a flimsy cardboard box, the one with Lacey French’s personal items.A box about which he should not be even remotely curious. Except he was.

The box was one large temptation, and to a man who had long ago ceased being tempted by anything, its lure was palpable. He had left it on the kitchen table, untouched, though now he wished he had just brought it back over to the Blanchards last night and been done with it.

“That’s a hospital box,” Regina said as she brushed past him. She twisted the box around for the name French, L. to stare back up at them before turning to him with an arched brow. “So, it is true.”

At this rate, he was going to need more whiskey. “No,” he said as he joined her at the table. “There was a….misunderstanding at the hospital,” he concluded. There was no need to drag Tinker into this, even if this entire fiasco being her fault in the first place.

“A misunderstanding?” Regina repeated. “A misunderstanding is misspelling someone’s name on their admission papers.”

“The admitting staff misunderstood our relationship,” Gold hedged. ‘Before I could correct them, the family arrived.”

Regina stalled him by holding up a perfectly manicured finger. “The family? You mean, this woman has a family who believed she has some mystery fiancé they’ve never met?”

“Actually…”

Regina’s mouth dropped ever so slightly but she recovered quickly. “Well, you’re just full of surprises,” she muttered before she drained the remainder of her drink. She unceremoniously handed it over to him for a refill. In the process of pouring them both another glass, something landed on the floor at his feet. He glanced down out of instinct and found the hospital box lid. Regina was already peering into the box, a silver tassel purse in her hand.

A mixture of horrified fury locked him in place, as Regina rooted about the box’s contents with the occasional hum of interest. “What,’ he finally managed, his voice somehow steady and calm, “do you think you are doing?”

Regina didn't even look back at him. “Meeting your fiancée,” she said before unending the entire purse onto the table. Multiple plastic cards hit the surface and bounced around, a few lipstick containers rolled towards the edge of the table, some spare change and tokens, and a prophylactic. Regina hummed as she nudged the condom out of the way before plucking one card out of the mess. “Lucy French?” Regina read out loud. “I thought her name was Lacey?”

“It is!” he growled as he grabbed it out of her hand. “You have no right-”

“Me?” Regina laughed. “I’m not the one who told everyone a woman in a coma was my fiancée!”

“I did no such thing-” he protested, though he had done nothing to dissuade others from thinking it. Guilt held his tongue as Regina returned to rummaging through the box’s meager contents. Feeling rather lost, he looked down at the object in his hand, to see the growingly familiar face from the hospital bed smiling up at him.

Lacey did look just like her sister. They both had the same features, the bright blue eyes, and that knowing look...though Lacey’s driver’s license was...a different look than he had remembered from Christmas morning. Her eyes were rimmed in black and her lips were a dark red with a smirk that promised nothing and everything all the same time.

It did not match the woman from the platform or the still figure now laying in a hospital bed. His only memory of Lacey French had been one of kindness and compassion, blue eyes crinkled into a smile and an impossibly familiar tone that had reached out across the walls he had wrapped himself in and drawn him back to the land of the living.

Growing uncomfortable under the photo’s gaze, he looked over at the print and found Regina was correct. Lucy Eleanor French, born July 26, 1964. Barely thirty-something, nearly half his age….

“This is Versace,” Regina announced as she tossed something silk and slinky at him. He just barely caught it, and the smell of roses floated up to him. “And this is Prada.” She slid her arms into the blue wool coat and with a wink, spun around to face him. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Take that off,” he grumbled as he deposited the dress back into the now empty box. “We have no right to go through her things.”

“Lacy things,” Regina purred as she drew a scrap of lace out of the coat’s pocket. Gold stared at in confusion for a moment, before the realization of what Regina held in her hand hit him.

Blood rushed to his cheeks and….other places which made him blush all the harder. Regina took mercy on him, through her eyes were practically dancing with mirth. She moved to put the offending garment back into the coat pocket when her brow furrowed.

She pulled out a small, round tin. She moved her hand to reveal a label with a small dog on it with a trusting look that only dogs and small children had been ever been capable of. “She has a dog?” Regina asked him.

He shook his head. “No one said anything about her having a dog,” he said, more to reassure himself. “She would have mentioned it to someone.”

Regina looked back down at the dog food in her hand. “Maybe,” she said, though it was clear she did not agree. “ Though...she didn’t mention having a fiancé either.”

\--

  
Storybrooke Apartments was not what Belle had been expecting. She glanced down at the address she had scribbled down from Mary Margaret's contact book to double check. The building started back at her unapologetically as if daring her to question how a transit worker could afford an apartment in this neighborhood.

After all, plenty of wealthy people worked even when they had the means not to, and Mary Margaret had alluded to some fondness Gold had for the transit system. Rich, eccentric men did odd things all the time, or so Lacey had always told her. Belle hadn’t met too many of them to know.

And if this Gold was indeed a rich, eccentric older man...who could afford an apartment in Logan Square...he would be Lacey’s type.

Truman Gold was a puzzle, and in the midst of things so far beyond her control, Belle had seized upon him. Mary Margaret and David had their own concerns; Emma’s last tests had not been promising, and the hospital bills were quickly eating through their savings. If Mary Margaret's father had not left them the house, Belle had no doubt they would have mortgaged it twice over by now. They had considered selling it briefly until the doctors had expressed how important it was for Emma to feel secure, comfortable, and to avoid any undue stress.

Ironically, it had been Lacey who had pointed out that selling a third generation house, the only one Emma had ever known, to pay for hospital bills would be the definition of stressful.

It had also been one of the last times Lacey had been at the house... one of the last months where Lacey had been there with them before she had drifted away into the city scene and left them all behind. Is that where she had met Gold?

As Belle stood blocking the sidewalk, with her head down, she missed the very man she had come to see disappear around the far corner of the building. Instead, a redhead walking towards Storybrooke Apartments stopped just shy of entering the building. “You lost or something?” the woman demanded of Belle with a pop of her gum.

“Lost?” Belle repeated, momentarily distracted by the bright green dress the woman had on without so much as a jacket despite the sub-frigid temperatures. The woman gestured impatiently to the map in Belle’s hands. “Oh, right, sorry,” Belle said as she stuffed it into her pocket. “Do you live here?”

“Live here?” the woman gave a short bark of laughter before snapping back into her previous tone. “I own this place.”

“Oh, um. Great!” Belle exclaimed, hoping her surprise wasn’t too obvious. “ Well then, you would know the man that lives in,” she checked the address once more,” 537?”

The woman’s mouth curled into a wicked grin. “Know him?” I’m dating him!”

Belle blinked. “I’m sorry, you’re...you’re dating Tru-Truman Gold?”

The woman removed her sunglasses to better peer down her nose at Belle. Her eyes were the startling green as her dress. “What’s it to you?” she demanded. “Who are you anyway?”

“Ah, Belle, Belle French,” she hurried to say and stuck her hand out. Gold’s paramour merely sniffed in response. “Mr. Gold and I share a mutual….friend,” she continued. The woman sniffed at this and started to turn away. “My, that is just...a really lovely color on you.”

One did not grow up with Lacey French without learning a few tricks on how to handle a woman like this. As predicted the redhead dropped her guard almost at once at the compliment. “Oh, do you like it?” she replied. “It’s emerald!”

Belle forced herself to smile. “Brings out your eyes.”

“Thank you,” the woman replied, her hand going to her heart. “That is so nice of you to say. My sister told me I looked like a hooker.”

“No!” Belle assured her, though truth be told, the dress was rather low cut and was almost certainly polyester. “It’s perfect.”

The woman returned to admiring herself and Belle had to work quickly to recapture her attention. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

The woman tossed her head, shaking out her red curls. “Selena Mills,” she provided as if she as was reading off a royal title.

“Oh, of course,” Belle said with an increasingly brittle smile. “Selena. I’m sorry I didn’t expect to...run into you is all. ”

A pleased smile spread over Selena’s face, all too happy to accept this blatant lie. “I do usually work afternoons, but today’s my day off. Rummy isn’t home, I’m afraid. I can tell him you stopped by?”

Belle had to bite back the few very choice words she would like Selena Mills to tell “Rummy”. Lacey would have made quick work of Selena Mills, but Lacey wasn’t here at the moment and Belle had never been that great at confrontation. “Oh, no need,” Belle assured her. ‘I’ll be sure to tell him we met.”

A slow, wicked smile spread over Selena’s face. “Not if I see him first.”

\--

The taxi driver took one look at the address on Lacey’s driver’s license and made an almost impressed noise. Twenty minutes later, they arrived at Lake Point Tower Condominiums, directly beside the newly redesigned Navy Pier. With the holiday season, a few tourists were braving the frigid wind, though one couple was smart enough to grab the taxi as Gold exited it.

Lake Point Tower stretched upwards into the sky, a bronze-tinted glass that blended into the winter fog. In the afternoon light, it reflected the light of Lake Michigan to transform into a golden beacon. It was the only skyscraper in downtown Chicago east of Lake Shore Drive; Gold had passed by it plenty of times though he had never before stopped to truly consider it. After all, Chicago was full of skyscrapers. He had ceased seeing them years ago..

He had been internally debating the wisdom of this since Regina had first hailed him the taxi. Either there was a canine in need, as Regina insisted or he was about to break into a strange woman’s apartment after claiming to be her fiancé. He could see the headlines now: Aged Stalker Breaks Into Victim’s Apartment.

He lingered on the sidewalk for a second longer, but there would be no living with Regina if he didn’t at least check. He would just go and look, in and out. If there was a dog, he would feed it, clean up and then notify the Blanchards.

When he entered the lobby, it was straight into pandemonium. A woman with three children was in the midst of a heated discussion with an apologetic doorman and an equally irritated delivery person. Gold hovered there for a moment, uncertain where to go when a man came out of a nearby door and nearly walked right into him.

The newcomer gestured towards the door he was holding open impatiently. In the time it took for Gold to accept the door, the man had taken in the scene before them. “Every day something new, huh?” he remarked knowingly.

“You have no idea,” Gold said as the man disappeared out the front door. It was easy after that to find his way to the seventh floor, and to the apartment number on Lacey’s license (712). There was every chance that this was no longer her apartment, but the key fit perfectly.

No dog came hurrying up to meet him and though he was tempted to turn right around and leave, he knew he should at least go in and check to make sure there was no dog in dire need. He had made the argument that the dog could very well be someone else’s, but Regina had been adamant.

Gold tread carefully, all too aware he was trespassing. It did not smell as if a dog had been kept up here for a few days…but still, he made his way through the hall to the living room as if in a museum. The entire apartment was modern in whites and blacks with the occasional pop of blue in the form of liquids sitting in clear vases. “Very... clean,” he murmured, as no other adjectives occurred to him. There was no trace of Christmas here, not a tree or a ribbon. The lights were still on and the furniture was minimalistic to the point of unusable. It could not have been different from the Blanchards home if it had tried.

The windows faced out across the Chicago skyline, and Gold allowed himself a moment to linger there to admire the view. Until he returned to why he had come. He whistled, but nothing stirred. Following the curving windows past the bar, with its industry styled stools and glass decanters, he discovered a black and white photograph of Lacey perched on the bar. She wore a turtleneck, her eyes on someone in the distance with a smile that promised there was nothing underneath the sweater.

With effort, Gold turned away from this rare personal item in the sea of stylized decor to make his way further into the apartment. He peered under the couches and behind doors though he felt incredibly foolish. “Psst, psst,” he murmured, unwrapping the scar around his neck. Lacey kept her apartment warmer than he would prefer and he was already beginning to dampen. “Come on, boy,” he called again as he turned into the kitchen.

The kitchen boasted all black appliances, shiny and brand new, and there was no hint of a dog bowl here either. On the other side of the kitchen, there was a swing door which judging by the layout of the apartment would bring him back to the front door. Ready to pretend none of this had happened, he went towards it when there was a shuffle on the other side of the door, faint enough to have been his imagination. It repeated and then started to draw closer to the swinging door. “Hello?” he called out as he went to push the door open to hopefully reveal the missing dog.

Instead, the swing door flew open into the kitchen to smack him square in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

By the time, Belle left Selena Mills, she was vibrating with righteous rage. While it was true Lacey had dallied with plenty of married men in her days and had no scruples when it came to breaking up relationships with her whims, this was different.

Lacey was the one engaged to Truman Gold, and while she laid in a coma, he was- he was- two-timing her! All Belle could see was the green of Selena Mill’s eyes crinkled in that wicked smile as she made her way straight to Lacey’s place.

Somewhere in that ridiculous condo that Lacey leased, there was a clue explaining this entire fiasco. Lacey was careful in all her dalliances. If she had gone and gotten herself engaged, somewhere, she had detailed information on Truman Gold which would explain exactly why whether it was bank account statements, love trinkets, or postcards. The French twins had always shared a love of collecting mementos though Lacey’s collection ran more to matchbooks and bar coasters these days.

Belle made her way through the gauntlet of the Lake Tower lobby easily. The doorman, a nervous looking fellow, looked pointedly away when she entered only to pounce on the fellow who followed behind her, demanding to know who he was visiting and why. As Lacey made her way to the elevator, she mused on the perks of being an identical twin, though the thought was quickly followed by guilt. None of these people knew Lacey was in a hospital bed across town and that is was only her twin sister walking amongst them.

Course, they probably didn’t even know Lacey had a twin. Her fiancé hadn’t.

That was the crux of her initial curiosity about Truman Gold. She just wanted to understand who this man her sister had agreed to marry was, what he liked, disliked, who he was, how they had met, and why Lacey hadn’t bothered to tell him about her friends, her family or her identical twin sister.

Now, she could care less about any of it though if Belle had taken the moment to really consider, to stop and think, she may have even been able to admit to herself that Truman Gold was a scapegoat, and the real target of her anger was the stranger who laid in the bed over at Metro General.

Lacey’s condo door was unlocked, which was not surprising knowing her sister. The condo building was known for its security, and Lacey had never been one for remembering such trivial things like locking her own door. The surprising thing was the murmur of a male voice from within the apartment. Belle paused as adrenaline poured through her system, her heart pounding like a rabbit until the faintly familiar voice grew clearer through the door.

Truman Gold was here and he was...calling for a dog?

Belle’s fear transformed seamlessly into indignation as Selena Mill’s green eyes danced back to the front of her mind. Screw the reconnaissance mission, Belle was going to go in there and straight up demand Truman Gold explain everything. Starting with why he was here of all places and whistling for a dog; Lacey hated dogs.

Letting herself into the apartment, Belle listened from the hallway as Gold moved slowly through the apartment. His voice grew louder as he entered the kitchen, and Belle’s hands curled into fists. Lacey had always been better at confrontation, somehow able to keep a level head and within seconds able to flay her victim alive with a calm voice and cutting words. Belle’s temper had always run more the reactionary type, but she forced herself to take a deep, long breath to smother the nauseating mixture of emotions in her stomach.

Tracing his voice to the kitchen, Belle paused on the other side of the swing door that led into the kitchen. “Fancy seeing you here,” she said under her breath, and then repeated it in, a more casual manner until it sounded cool and flippant as Lacey’s typical greeting. Channeling Lacey would help keep her grounded, from flying off the handle, and hopefully get her some answers.

With a decisive nod, and completely within her own head, she didn’t even hear the footsteps on the other side of the door, Belle thrust the door open- only for them to collide with something on the other side. Time slowed down just long enough for Belle to catch a glimpse of Truman Gold’s face as the door swung straight into his nose and to hear the thud of wood against flesh. The following hiss of pain as the door swung slowly closed between them returned her world to normal speed but Belle remained frozen in place.

Half of her had the very good idea of fleeing the premises and pretending none of this ever happened, while the other, braver half of her, slowly, slowly entered the kitchen. She was not aware of her own hand going to her nose in sympathy as her eyes met Gold’s. He now stood well clear of the door, his hand clutching the left side of his face. “Good shot,” he said in lieu of a greeting, and he even managed a pained smile which made her feel ten times worse than she already did which was in parts infuriating and humiliating.

“I didn’t know anyone was here-” Belle began but Gold raised his hand to stave off her apologies and she fell silent as mortification tripped up her tongue.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he assured her. “Those things are treacherous.”

“What things?” Belle repeated before Gold indicated the door behind her. “Oh! Right. Doors.” Gold chuckled but it must have hurt because he inhaled sharply in pain. It luckily at least prompted her into action “Sorry, sorry! Oh, God, I really am sorry. Here, let me get you some ice.”

She hurried to the freezer, her internal voice vehemently trying to remind her that she had nothing to apologize for. Gold was a philandering, double-crossing, no good-

In the midst of trying to remember why she should be furious with Gold instead of embarrassed, Belle knocked two pints of Baskin Robbins to the floor. Before she could retrieve them, Gold scooped them up. He offered her another forgiving smile, despite her having just possibly blinded him.

“I’ve got it,” he assured her as she tried to juggle the ice into one hand to take the two cartons from him.

Belle scooted out of the way, depositing the ice into a kitchen towel. “I wasn’t expecting anybody to be here,” she tried to explain as she handed him the makeshift ice pack. “How’d you get in here?”

He winced slightly as he pressed the ice pack against his eye. “Key,” he said with a jingle of the keyring in his pocket.

“Oh.” He had a key. Lacey made a point to never give anyone keys to her home. It had been one of their biggest fights when Belle had learned Lacey had given her maid a key, but not her sister.

A silence fell between them though Gold didn’t lower his gaze. It was not lecherous or knowing, but a simple politeness, as if she had every right to his full attention. It only served to make Belle all too aware of herself. “You stay here a lot?” she managed, though she found she really did not want to know the answer. Selena Mills and her wicked smile was still on her mind.

“Oh, you know,” Gold said with a clearing of his throat. “I help out where I can...with the dog.”

“Lacey doesn’t have a dog,” Belle said just as something soft brushed up against her ankles. What sounded suspiciously like a shriek escaped from her mouth as she took two very hasty steps backward straight into the countertop. A rack of teacups rattled ominously but thankfully none fell. A small white terrier snuffled excitedly as it followed after her to sniff her jeans. With the spotless snow-white fur, it blended into the rest of the apartment. Belle hadn’t heard it come into the kitchen, much less seen it against the immaculate white tile.

Gold crouched down on the floor, and the terrier went to him willingly. “Hello, there,” he murmured as his fingers dug into the fur at the dog’s neck. There was a jingle as his fingers brushed against the dog tag. “Good boy, Sheriff,” Gold murmured behind her. “How you been boy?”

The dog, well trained, did not attempt to lick Gold or jump on him. It’s butt wagged happily as it started to turn in circles at their feet. “When did Lacey get a dog?” Belle demanded as the dog returned its attention to her ankles.

“Uh, I can’t really say,” Gold murmured. “I bet he’s hungry. I brought over some food.” He indicated a can behind her on the counter. “I’ll get him some water if you can find a can opener?”

Not willing to admit she had no idea where a can opener would be or even if Lacey owned one, Belle began digging through the drawers. Finally, she found one and made short work of opening the canned food before dumping into a bowl. “Lacey doesn’t like dogs,” Belle said incredulously as she lowered the food to the floor. The dog had no hesitations on diving headfirst into his meal. Gold put down a bowl of water beside him, and the dog took a break for a long drink of water before diving back into his dinner.

“You wouldn't know it,” Gold responded with a shrug of his shoulders. They both stood over the dog as it happily made quick work of the wet food. Belle sneaking side glances at her supposed future-brother-in-law. Everyone knew Lacey didn’t like dogs. She made a point to tell them that within the first ten minutes of conversation. Lacey was weirdly proud of the time where she had saved some local kids from a junkyard dog, the bite marks on her right arms still visible in the right light.

Belle moved to throw the empty can away, noticing the trash bag was full of other empty tins of dog food, but nothing else. The maid must have been coming by, and no doubt used to Lacey disappearing for weeks at a time, had thankfully come by to make sure Sheriff was fed and walked in his owner’s absence.

“Well, I’m sure her maid loves having to take care of a dog now too,” Belle said with a sigh. Gold started slightly, before looking back over his shoulder at the rest of the apartment as if it had never occurred to him that to keep it that spartan, someone had to regularly clean and tidy up. Lacey was certainly never going to do it, she hated cleaning, more than anything.

A suspicion started to clarify itself in Belle’s mind. “Well,” she started innocently as she kept her eyes on where Sheriff was making quick work of his dinner. “You know how freakishly clean Lacey is. I didn’t even understand why she even needed a maid…”

Before Gold could respond to Belle's bait, the phone on the wall between them began to ring. Neither of them moved to answer it. Belle cocked her head at Gold, and tried her luck. “Aren’t you going to get that?” she asked. 

“Uh, no,” he said with a shake of his head. His long hair swept across his collar, and Belle’s fingernails bit into her arms. “The machine can get it.”

Belle narrowed her eyes at him, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. The phone continued to shriek until Belle leaned over to pluck the receiver off the wall. “Hello?”

“Hi!” the voice on the other end of the phone replied. “Is Truman Gold available?”

Belle opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She ended up just handing the phone to Gold who stared at her quizzically. “It’s for you,” she managed to say as he relieved her of the handset.

He handled it as if it might explode. “Hello?”

Sheriff wiggled his tail as he finished with his meal and butted against her ankles for attention. Belle kneeled down to stroke his fur, the terrier clearly thrilled to have the attention. Her reconnaissance mission had been a spectacular failure, but there was no question Gold was hiding something. He had his back to her as he made a few more noncommittal noises into the phone before he murmured a goodbye.

Belle didn’t dare outright ask him who that had been but he answered anyway. “That was the hospital. They say it's customary for friends and family to come down and give blood.”

Belle brightened as an idea occurred to her. “Let’s go together,” she suggested. She could still salvage this. There was something Truman Gold was not telling her, all she needed was some time. He couldn’t escape her questions with a needle in his arm. “Right now.” 

“Right now?” he repeated incredulously.

“Yea,” Belle said with a brittle smile. “I mean, I was going to check on Lacey this afternoon, so it’s perfect. You worked this morning, so you’re free, right? No...other plans?”

Gold stared at her, clearly uncertain at her tone. It only encouraged Belle to press harder. He was hiding something; she knew it. “What about Sheriff?” he finally asked. “No telling if the maid is going to keep coming back and walking him for us-”

“Oh, that’s easy. Emma loves dogs. I’m sure she would be thrilled to take care of him,” Belle said with a shrug. Mary Margaret would kill her, but David shared his daughter’s love for all things four-legged.

“Let’s, uh, call a taxi then,” Gold decided as he moved to pick up the phone again.

“We can just take Lacey’s car,” Belle replied. Gold started ever so slightly, and Belle had to bite down on her grin. “You do know where it’s parked...don’t you?”

The challenge was implicit, and at first, he could only stammer. “Oh, yeah, I uh...yeah,” he said finally with some determination. “In the...parking garage downstairs. I can make sure there's gas in it if you want to take Sheriff here outside to do his business. We could make it before the blood bank closes for the day.”

Belle ended up fetching the leash from the pantry as Gold made his escape to the lower levels. Inside the pantry, Lacey had stashed a bag of dogs toys, though there was no more dog food to be seen. Belle made a note to stop by the store as she let herself and the now trembling terrier out into the hallway.

“Ah, Ms. French,” the doorman exclaimed as soon as she stepped out of the elevator into the lobby. “Good to see you. It’s cold out there. Would you like me to take Sheriff on his evening constitutional?” he asked, indicating the leash in her hand.

Sheriff trotted over to sniff at his shoes in greeting. “That’s not necessary,” Belle assured him. “I’m happy to get some fresh air.”

He seemed taken back by this. “Oh, of course. Ms. Ashley had mentioned I might need to check in on him for the rest of the weekend, but if you’re back?”

“Ms. Ashley?”

The doorman’s face wrinkled in anxiety. “Oh, sorry, your maid, miss,” he hurried to clarify. “She’s been walking him the last few days, but as she doesn’t work on weekends…” 

“Oh, well, I...I”m actually Lacey’s sister, Belle,” she said and held out her hand our to shake.

He recovered quicker than Gold had. “A pleasure,” he said smoothly as he took her hand in his.

“My sister is...away for a bit longer,” Belle lied, unable to tell the truth. “Her fiancé and I are just on our way out.”

“Ah,” the man said with a knowing look at the word fiancé. “Yes, I’ve heard about him.”

His voice did not sound favorable, and Belle’s brow crinkled. Before she could ask what he meant, Sheriff let out a warning whine and the man took a step back out of the line of fire. “Excuse me,” Belle said and she hurried out into the cold of downtown Chicago. Thankfully, Sheriff was a city dog and did his business quickly to escape back into the warmth of Lake Tower. Gold was already waiting for her when they got back upstairs. He said his own goodbye to Sheriff, his voice soft and kind, and for a moment, Belle almost forgot about Selena Mills. Almost.

By the time he straightened, Belle remembered all too well that this man, this stranger, may have saved her sister’s life, but was without a doubt, hiding something. They made their way down to the bottom level of the parking garage where Lacey’s BMW waited just around the corner.

Gold’s knuckles were white from his death grip on the wheel. It was possible he suffered from driving anxiety, which might also explain why he usually only took taxis or the transit system around town. Belle refrained from prying further, and instead, spent the car ride making small talk in the hopes of him slipping up again in regards to Lacey. Since they had made decent time, the nurses at the hospital were able to take them right away. They led the two of them to the back where Gold made himself comfortable. He hung his jacket up on a hook overhead and then started to roll his sleeve up as he sat down on the cot.

It occurred to Belle that this was not his first or even second time donating blood. He caught her staring and his brow raised ever so slightly. Belle hurried to follow suit. The parchment paper on the cot crinkled warningly as the nurse appeared over Belle with a needle in hand. The needle's tube looped back up to the blood bag hanging overhead which would soon hold several ounces of her blood. Belle’s stomach contracted violently and a sweat broke out across the back of her knees.

The nurse, ignorant of her change of heart, started to disinfect her arm. Her touch was clammy and distant, and it only added to the panic starting to grow in Belle’s chest. This was a terrible idea. She only barely resisted the urge to twist her arm out of the nurse's grip and run to the door.

Always an open book, her face must have reflected her inner turmoil for the entire room to see. “S’alright, honey,” the nurse assured her as she began to prep the needle. “Just turn your head that way, there's a girl.”

Belle’s head flopped away from the impending sight of blood, over towards Truman Gold. His nurse had finished jabbing the needle into his arm; blood was already rushing up the tube into the bag above. The sight of it made her so dizzy, she had to close her eyes and count to ten.

“You okay?” Gold murmured.

Unable to admit she did not like needles or the sight of blood, Belle changed the subject. “We’ll have to get your picture for the mantle,” she declared. At Gold’s quizzical expression, she hastened to add, “A wedding photo.”

Gold murmured his understanding, his lips quirking at the corners. “I’m not photogenic,” he replied in a dry tone that elicited a weak chuckle out of her.

The nurse took the opportunity to plunge the needle into her arm and a hiss escaped from her before she could swallow it back. Gold pretended he hadn’t heard, but the nurse rolled her eyes good-naturedly as she adjusted Belle’s arm carefully back to her side. “Leave it alone, dear,” she told her sternly. “Your husband over there has the right idea, just lay back and relax.”

“He’s not-”

But the nurse was already gone. Belle let her head fell back onto the pillow, attempting to focus on anything instead of the blood whizzing out of her. Gold was relaxed and calm, and there was something kind in the practiced avoidance of his gaze. Belle’s grand plan to interrogate him, utterly forgotten as she tried to focus on not being sick. They sat there in silence for a few minutes as the nurses continued to move around them. There weren’t many others donating, so most of the nurses were doing clerical work or tidying up. Some of the younger ones were loitering in the doorway, catching each other up on the day.

So focused on anything but the sound of the blood in her ears, Belle didn’t notice a nurse had stepped between them until she spoke. “Mr. Gold,” the nurse said, and her voice was far too fond for Belle’s liking. “What are you doing here?”

“I would think that would be obvious,” Gold replied, and the answering chuckle was nothing like Selena Mills laugh, and yet it elicited the same overprotective anger.

Belle struggled to sit upright, the paper crunching underneath her. The nurse turned at the noise and stopped short, face as white as if she had seen a ghost.

“Nurse Tinker,” Gold said from just behind her. “This is Belle French, Lacey’s twin sister.”

The nurse let out a breath all at once. “Oh, wow,” she said, hand over her heart. “I thought- whew. Oh, and call me Isobel,” the nurse said. “He won’t but you feel free.”

Gold mumbled something behind them, and Tinker turned back to unhook his bag. She didn’t bother to offer him juice, and Gold didn’t move to sit upright. He simply murmured a thanks and put his own hand on the gauze covering the needle track.

Belle barely noticed any of it, too focused on Isobel Tinker. Blonde and petite, the nurse looked barely old enough to drive, but she had a practiced and confident way about her. She didn’t have any makeup on, nor did she need any, and her green eyes were crinkled in a permanent smile. She did not have Lacey’s knowledgeable gaze or Selena Mills wicked smile, but there was something equally magnetic about this young woman that made Belle unreasonably sullen.

So lost in her own thoughts, Belle didn’t notice the nurse had come to her other side until the gentle touch on her arm. She must have jumped because the nurse smiled sympathetically down at her. “First time giving blood?” she guessed as she drew the needle-free. At Belle’s hesitant nod, the nurse grabbed a cup of orange juice and a cookie. “Okay, I want you to sit here and sip this, or you’ll get woozy.”

Already feeling slightly dizzy, Belle took both items before Isobel Tinker was called over to a nearby bedside, where another nurse was having trouble locating a vein.

Already feeling more herself, Belle pulled herself to a seated position. “How do you know that nurse?” Belle asked, in a truly pathetic attempt at nonchalance.

Gold paused in rolling up his sleeve. “From a long time ago,” he replied. He did not elaborate.

Unsatisfied, Belle pressed him further. “So, before you started seeing Lacey?”

He nodded.

“When did you and Lacey start seeing each other?”

“Feels like it was just yesterday,” he answered smoothly.

Belle wrinkled her nose. “So...recently?”

Gold nodded. “You could say that.”

“That’s a fast engagement.”

Gold stood and gathered his jacket to escape the barrage of questions. From across the room, Nurse Tinker wagged a finger at him. “Five more minutes, you two!”

“I’m fine,” he assured her as he checked his watch. “I should get going,” he said and he pulled out Lacey’s keys from his pocket. “Why don’t you take the car since you’re going back to the apartment?”

“Where are you going?” Belle demanded as she struggled to stand.

“Wait a minute! We’re not done with you yet,” Isobel exclaimed, already hurrying over.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Belle said just as her knees went out from underneath her and she fell to the floor in a dead faint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! So many of guessed it was Belle on the other side of the door. I was happy to give Belle her entire chapter this time around, especially as she struggles with her own thoughts and feelings on Truman Gold and her sister. 
> 
> Next chapter sees Belle confront Gold on her suspicions, Jefferson coming clean about knowing the truth, and more Belle/Gold bonding time.


	7. Chapter 7

Today was not going at all the way Gold had planned. Though to be fair, he didn’t know what he had expected. After all, he had awoken in a suburb of Chicago in a home of strangers who considered him a part of their family. He had escaped to work only to find himself considered a city hero, and had somehow ended up breaking into the apartment of his fake fiance before winding back up at the hospital with his pseudo-sister-in-law.

Said pseud-sister-in-law was still recovering from her experience in the blood bank. Belle still had her arm raised over her head, elbow cocked at an angle as instructed. Gold had seen plenty of people woozy after giving blood, but none had gone down quite like like that.

One second, Belle had been right behind him. The next, she had gone white as a ghost and collapsed. Gold had only barely managed to catch her. He had been close enough to see the sheen of sweat on her forehead. Belle had looked vaguely terrified during the entire experience, but she had been braver than most grown men in the face of the needle and the smell of antiseptic.

He hadn’t known what to do, so he had just held her just off the floor, her curls tickling the inside of his wrist. He was not a large man, but Belle was small in his arms, practically weightless despite being in a dead faint. This close, she smelled of something sweet and clean and he inhaled deeply, to see if he could identify it over the smell of blood and antiseptic but it eluded him.

He should have been relieved when Belle’s eyes had fluttered open, but it had been deja vu. The roar of the hospital’s heater had turned into a rushing train, and the tiles under his knees had turned as hard as the metal of the tracks. Only when Nurse Tinker had knelt down beside them, had he realized they were still in the hospital. Gold had gratefully released Belle to stumble back to her feet before he retreated to the doorway to catch his own breath.

He had been forced to tell the story of saving Lacey from the tracks enough times to last him a lifetime; first to the cops, then to the EMTS, the Blanchards, and Jefferson, Regina, etc. etc. Gold didn’t particularly like to relive the feeling he had when the train had rushed past, how still Lacey had been, or how the world had changed in an instant and how he was still struggling to catch up.

There were times when he could almost believe he had been transported to a different world, that he was the one in a coma, and that all of this was some fever dream. At the moment, Gold would have liked nothing more than to go home and shut out the rest of the world, but Tinker had made him swear he would deliver Belle safely to her sister’s room in case she fainted again.

Truth be told, Belle made him more nervous than he cared to admit. He had been taken unaware this morning when he met Belle, and despite her friendliness, she had not hidden her inquisitiveness. He didn’t blame her, after all, the entire situation was absurd. Her sister had almost been killed in a freak accident, but Gold didn’t fully understand her current animosity. After all, her twin sister did have a secret fiance; it just wasn’t him.

He had been blaming Lacey for awakening something inside of him, but truthfully, it hadn’t been Lacey at all. Gold didn’t even know Lacey French outside the stories the close-knit group of friends had told him. He hadn’t planned on lying to them...they had just been so relieved to have someone to reminisce with, the way people did when they were clinging to hope.

They made their way down the hallway in silence, the cacophony of the hospital allowing them time to dwell on their own thoughts. Nurses darted in and out of doorways, laughter came from some rooms, the sound of stifled sobs from others. Gold flexed his arm to test his bandage, the sting of skin against the adhesive a welcome distraction as they entered the elevator. He should just tell Belle the truth, here and now, but the truth was he was a coward and the words would not come.

As they exited the elevator onto their floor, an orderly rushed past them, and in his haste jostled Belle. Gold reached out to prevent her from bouncing into the wall, but she shied away from him. “I’m fine,” she said with a pointed tone that brooked no room for argument. “I’m not made of glass.”

Recognizing the symptoms of wounded pride, Gold cleared his throat. An olive branch may be the last thing Belle French wanted at the moment, but it was worth trying. “You know,” he started casually, careful to keep his gaze straight ahead. “The first time I donated blood, I threw up.”

Belle’s stride slowed. “You what?”

“Threw up,” he repeated. He could still remember how the world had gone suddenly very cold before his stomach upended the cafeteria food from earlier. Neal had thought the entire thing hilarious and had laughed about it for weeks. Gold hadn’t found it all that amusing, but his son’s laughter was rare in those first few weeks at the hospital.

They were not Lacey’s only visitors. The Blanchards were at the foot of the bed, whispering when they noticed they were no longer alone. “How nice to see you both,” Mary Margaret greeted. She looked at the two of them but did not ask how exactly they had arrived together.

“I thought you were going to visit tomorrow?” Belle asked her friend in a preventive measure, as Gold moved to shake David’s hand in hello.

“Well, that was the plan,” Belle started, “but…”

Since Gold had last visited, the room had transformed. There were bouquets on every surface of the room, the smell of flowers permeating the room. Bright spots of color broke up the monotony of the wallpaper and brought some needed life to the space.

The generic hospital room was now personal, almost cozy. There was a hairbrush on the cabinets by the bed, alongside some personal items, a knitted throw at the bottom of the bed, and the bundle of wires were no longer the only thing hanging in the room.

Emma was busy taping up photos to the wall over the bed. There were pictures of Lacey’s life, full of now familiar faces but even more unfamiliar ones. Gold recognized a few of them from the album they had looked through the previous evening, but not all of them.

Belle stared at the wall, her hands coming to her mouth as if holding back a grateful sob. It was very easy for him to forget that her twin, her person, her other half was suddenly gone from her, but at that moment, Gold felt a rush of shame for not being more understanding of what Belle had been going through the past twenty-four hours.

“Oh, guys,” Belle said, and her voice was strained. “This is amazing. She’d love this.”

“It was Emma’s idea,” David said, every inch the proud father.

In the center, Emma had placed the photo from yesterday’s belated Christmas. Gold’s own face stared back out at him; his fist curled at his side as he had to fight the urge to punch the man in the photograph as hard as he could.

Mary Margaret noticed Gold’s stricken expression and cleared her throat. “Sorry, we didn’t have any photos of just the two of you,” she explained, clearly misconstruing his thoughts.

He shook his head, but before he could explain, Belle had turned her attention back to him. “I bet Gold could bring you some,” she suggested.

Her focus was wholly on him now, the energy that she had been burning with all day back in full force. Her eyes were bright as stars, cheeks flushed, as she stared up at him as if daring him to fail her. Gold couldn’t take his eyes off her.  
  
“I didn’t see any at Lacey’s place but surely you have some at your apartment?” Belle asked, though her tone made it clear she didn’t believe that at all.

Gold forced his mouth into a polite smile. “Like I said, I’m not very photogenic,” he repeated from their earlier conversation.

“I don’t know about that,” Belle said as she looked towards the photo of him on the wall. “You look quite handsome in that one.”

Gold swallowed, unsure why this pleased him as much as it embarrassed him. He did not get a moment to reflect on this, as Jefferson entered the room with two cups in hand and broke the mounting tension. “And who do we have here?” he greeted with a tip of his head. He handed the coffee over to the Blanchards. “If I had known you two were joining us, I’d have just grabbed the entire pot.”

It occurred to Gold that they had not come to the hospital this late in the evening just to visit Lacey. They all looked tired, and on edge. Sure enough, from under the sleeve of Emma’s sweater, an admittance band peeked out. When she caught his stare, she pulled her sleeve down to cover it.

Jefferson picked up the remote by Lacey’s bed. “Well, if no one minds, I had hoped to catch the game,” he said. “Supposed to be a real nail biter”

Gold could not see the screen at this angle, but the unmistakable sound of “Nuk, Nuk, Nuk!” indicated a rerun of the Three Stooges had come instead of whatever game Jefferson had been hoping to see.

“Turn that off,” Mary Margaret ordered with a pointed look at Jefferson, a recovering gambling addict.

Emma scoffed from where she continued her work. “Why do they have a TV in here anyway? She’s in a coma.”

“Hey!” David scolded. “She could hear you, you know.”

“Then, they should get her a radio,” Emma shot back.

“Maybe she’d like us to sing to her,” Jefferson suggested. “Lacey always does love a good karaoke night.”

David laughed. “Do you remember that time in Boystown-”

Mary Margaret quickly silenced him with a stern look and a discreet coughing spell. David shot a look at his teenage daughter, before coloring slightly and clearing his own throat.

“You two ever go to karaoke?” Belle asked innocently, turning back to him in the following silence.

“Ah, no,” Gold said with a self-deprecating chuckle. “Afraid not.”

“Really?” Mary Margaret said, a frown appearing on her face. “Lacey goes at least once a week. She’s never taken you?”

“Oh, well, I- I, uh, just meant-”

Belle saw her opening and took it. “You know her go-to karaoke song, though, right? she asked, innocently.

David, excited to know this one, blurted out, “Puff the Magic-”

“Dragon,” Gold finished with him with a serious nod. “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” he repeated knowingly to Belle. “Classic.”

“I’d like to hear Gold sing that one,” Jefferson said. “Always nice to hear a nice deep bass.”

Belle didn’t falter for a second. “Which one of the Three Stooges was Lacey’s favorite?” she demanded, crossing her arms in a challenge.

“Curley,” Gold said automatically before he could remember he shouldn’t be playing this game.

“Curley!” Belle scoffed before a shadow of doubt flitted across her face; it appeared she didn’t know her sister’s favorite stooge either. When she caught everyone staring, she shrugged. “He’s everybody’s favorite.”

“I like Shemp,” Jefferson offered, but Belle ignored him.

“Favorite ice cream?”

The two cartons from Lacey’s apartment flashed in Gold’s mind. “Baskin-Robbins.”

Belle took a step closer. Everyone else faded away as she drew him further into this madness. “Favorite baseball team?”

There was only one safe answer in a town divided. “Chicago.”

She had him and she knew it. Her smile was knowing and like a deer in the headlights, he could only stare straight as his certain doom approached. “Cubs or White Sox?”

God, she practically purred it. His mouth went dry, as the whiff of her perfume drifted back up to him, and he completely forgot the question.

“What the hell is going on?” Mary Margaret demanded and just like that the spell broke.

Gold took a hasty step backward as Belle bit her lip, probably to refrain from asking another question. Gold had to force himself to look away, unsure why his heart was racing so quickly.

“What’s with the twenty questions?” David asked as he joined his wife’s side.

“Don’t ask me,” Belle was saying from somewhere from far away. “ Ask his girlfriend.”

The room went deadly quiet as everyone turned to look at the still figure in the bed. “That’s not very funny, you know,” Mary Margaret said in a low aside to Belle, which carried to everyone else in the small room.

Belle shook her head rapidly. “No, no, not Lacey!” She leveled him with a look of utter disdain but at this point, he was utterly lost. “A Miss Selena Mills.”

Out of anyone he had expected Belle to name, nothing would have prepared him for her to say that particular one. Gold’s lips tilted upwards on their own accord. He tried to smother the smile, but the absurdity of the entire situation was boiling over and he was caught up in its wake.

Two days ago he had been just another man amongst the masses. Now, he was someone’s fiance, and her twin sister was accusing him of cheating on his fake girlfriend with Selena Mills of all people.

“Selena Mills?” he repeated, know entirely convinced this entire fiasco was a dream. He was dreaming, and this entire thing was some elaborate nightmare-

“She said you two were...intimate.” Belle continued as if he had confirmed it. The Blanchards were looking between the two of them as if both had grown two heads, but Belle was ignoring them.

“Red hair?” he asked. “This tall? Green eyes? That Selena Mills?”

“The very one!”

He couldn’t help it, he started to laugh. “Yes, well,” he managed with a shake of his head. “She also claims she invented aluminum foil. She’s delusional.”

Belle scoffed. “She was very lucid when I talked to her.”

Gold shook his head. This was lunacy. Enough was enough. “Look,” he started, ready to confess to the entire madness here and now. They could hail him away to jail, anything was better than this comedy of errors he had stumbled into.

(Though Fate it seemed had not quite finished with him.)

“You’re just pissed because Lacey didn’t tell you she was engaged,” Emma scoffed from where she stood, still taping pictures to the wall. She pointed to a photo she had just placed to prove her point. “You haven’t liked any of Lacey’s last few boyfriends.”

“That’s not true-”

Emma shook her head. “Is not. You told me last night you really hated that last guy she was seeing, Keith something or other-”

As things took a deeply personal turn, Gold leaned over to Jefferson. “I should go,” he murmured. The younger man nodded in agreement, but Belle turned on them before Gold could so much as take a step towards the door.

“Wait just one minute,” she protested. “You're not going anywhere. Not until you answer some questions-”

“Belle!” Mary Margaret snapped. “Enough! This isn’t the time or place for this.”

“When then?” Belle demanded. “We don’t know the first thing about this guy and you’re having him over for Christmas dinner!”

“That’s because he’s your sister’s fiance!” David barked, and it was the first time Gold had heard the affable man raise his voice, even Emma seemed taken aback by her father’s tone.

“And how do you know that?” Belle shot back. Both were either not aware of the level of their voices or not caring.

“The ring on her finger is a good indication,” Jefferson interjected but he quieted quickly under the glares he received.

“None of this makes any sense,” Belle continued. “She’s dated world-renowned doctors, Washington lobbyists, that guy from SNL. She had a type and Gold’s-”

“A transit worker?” David supplied for her. “You have something against the working class all of a sudden, Belle?”

Belle inhaled sharply, torn between outrage and shock. “That is not what I was trying to say-”

“What were you going to say?” David continued over her, gaining steam. “Did you forget Gold saved your sister’s life? He jumped on the tracks and pulled her out from underneath a train. God, Belle, have you even bothered to thank him?”

Belle’s mouth dropped open as if David had hit her. “ All I was trying to say,” she said slowly and deliberately, “is I don’t think he’s being entirely truthful with us.”

“Come on,” Emma grumbled. “This is stupid. Of course, Gold is Lacey’s fiance.”

There was something trusting in her gaze, in all their gazes, something that believed Gold would step up and be the man that they all thought he was, the man who was good enough for Lacey French, the man who had saved her life and brought her back to them.

And, at that moment, he wanted nothing more than to be that man, but he didn’t know how.

“If he wanted to prove it, he’d prove it,” Belle said to the teen. She turned back to him, an eyebrow cocked in challenge.

Gold opened his mouth to say something, to diffuse the situation, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw the band around Emma’s wrist. And instead of telling the truth, he took the coward’s way out. “Look,” he started with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t want to...bring this up but Lacey….had some... surgical work done.”

No one had expected that. The entire room’s eyebrows shot up as they all looked over to the bed where the main character in this drama remained utterly silent. Belle shook her head, refusing to believe this. “Lacey hates doctors. She’d never willingly go to one.”

Gold simply shrugged. “Well, that may be true, but about a month ago, she went to Mercy for some surgery….”

Tinker had mentioned Lacey had gone to Mercy for some work, but it was only when he had held Belle French in his arms, her identical sister, had he actually understood.

Emma looked fascinated. She peered over her father’s shoulder to where Lacey lay on the bed. Mary Margaret also was openly eyeing the blankets folded over Lacey’s bosom. “What surgery?” David asked his wife, who shook her head quickly, but not quickly enough.

“Did she?” Belle asked Jefferson, who simply shrugged.

“It does...sound like something she would do,” he replied carefully, wary of the minefield.

“Well, someone’s got to look,” Emma said as she reached out to do just that.

Belle beat her to the bed. “I’m her sister,” she reminded the teen though there was trepidation in her tone. “ I’ll do it.”

Belle moved to lift Lacey’s blankets to shield the rest of the room from what was happening underneath. After a moment, she lowered it back down, unable to make eye contact with anyone. Finally, she nodded, face going as red as a tomato.

Everyone looked on silently, uncertain of what to say and burning with curiosity. Finally, Jefferson came over to drape his arm around Belle’s shoulder. “Well, silver lining,” he said. “No one will ever mistake the two of you again.”

They were all surprised when instead of hitting him, Belle started to laugh, as if this was the funniest joke she had ever heard. And then, in the very next breath, she broke down crying on Jefferson’s shoulder. He simply held her, and behind them, the machines connected to Lacey continued to whirl.

\--

Gold made it home with every hope of disappearing into his apartment, and not coming back out for a week. Unfortunately, someone was waiting for him at his door. Out of the few people who knew his address and would possibly be waiting for him, the last person he wanted to see was Selena Mills.

She didn’t bother with a greeting. “You stood me up!” she exclaimed, loud enough for the entire complex to hear. She hadn’t been waiting long judging by her heels and lack of coat, just bad timing on his part. If he had been ten minutes later, he may have missed her entirely.

Gold’s brain was fried. He had barely gotten out of the hospital without a fight after Belle’s interrogation. Not that he blamed her for her suspicions, they were all true. He had gotten in over his head. If he admitted the truth now, that this was all a huge misunderstanding-

“Are you even listening to me?” Selena snapped her gum as her mouth twisted into a pout.

He hadn’t been. “Huh?”

“You stood me up for our date,” she repeated, snapping her gum on every word.

The world had gone made. “What date?” he asked with a shake of his head.

Standing her up was one thing, but Selena hadn’t even considered he had completely forgotten. “To the Ice Capades!” she said with a stomp of her foot and wobble of her bottom lip. “I had to eat those tickets.”

He closed his eyes in the hopes everything else might fade away and he would wake back up in reality. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said honestly.

“Ice. Capades,” Selena repeated slowly as if she was talking to someone half asleep. “I asked you yesterday. On the stairs.”

Something tickled the recesses of his memory, but before he could capture it, someone else was appearing at the top of the stairs, someone with familiar curly hair and a colorful scarf wrapped around his lower face.

After Belle’s accusation today, Selena standing outside his apartment in the evening was damning. Plus, Gold had no idea what Jefferson would be doing at his apartment unless he was checking up on Belle’s suspicions.

Gold panicked. “Selena, why don’t you step inside?” he asked as he fumbled for his keys. He got the door open and shoved Selena inside. “ I’ll be right in,” he said over her protests.

He barely got the door closed when Jefferson stepped into the hallway and his eyes fell on him. “Gold!” Jefferson exclaimed. “You just arriving or just leaving?”

Gold shoved the keys into his pocket. “Uh, leaving,” Gold said as he moved away from the door. “I forgot...milk.”

“Milk,” Jefferson repeated, just as the sound of music started to blare from the apartment. “You have company?” Jefferson asked as he peered around him.

“No, TV it’s on...next door,” Gold lied through his teeth as that was seemingly all he was capable of these days.

“Look, I don’t want to keep you,” Jefferson started and it occurred to Gold that the younger man was nervous.

“Do you want to go get a drink?” Gold suggested before he remembered Jefferson was sober. “Ah, sorry coffee?” Gold corrected. “There’s an all-night cafe just down on the next block.”

“No, no…,” Jefferson said through pursed lips. He wavered for a moment before he took a deep breath. “Gold, there’s something you should know.”

“What is it? Is it Emma? Is she okay?” The teen had been fine when he had left the hospital, her color already improved from when he had first entered the room but heart disease was tricky. Sometimes things happened without any warning at all.

“No, no, Emma’s fine,” Jefferson said and there was a faint smile on his lips as he regarded Gold. “Though it’s a bit funny you asked about Emma, instead of your fiance.”

Gold stammered, casting about for something to say, but Jefferson held out a hand. “Look, that night you visited Lacey, I was outside the door.” Gold stared back at him blankly and Jefferson sighed. “I know the truth.”

It took Gold a moment to understand but when he did his shoulders slumped forward as the weight of the world fell off them. He could breathe again, and he felt ten times lighter than he had in decades. “Oh thank God,” he said and he let loose a ragged chuckle. “Sorry, Jefferson, God, I just-You don’t have to worry, I’ll tell them everything-”

“Don’t tell them a thing!” Jefferson exclaimed, his hand shooting to grip Gold’s shoulder.

Gold paused. “What? You want me to keep lying to them?”

Jefferson looked him dead in the eye. “Last night you told me you’d never do anything to hurt them. Did you meant that?”

Gold could only nod.

“Ever since they met you, they feel like they have Lacey back. Not just safe, but actually back with them, part of our family again. If you tell them the truth, it’ll take her away again. They need you, Gold. Just like you need them.”

Gold’s voice seemed to have deserted him. “But-”

“I know you’re a good guy,” Jefferson continued over him. “And I know you’ll do the right thing.”

“How?” Gold asked. “Belle already suspects-”

Jefferson blew his breath up and out, his curls rustling over his brow. ”Belle’s more worried about her sister than anything else right now, and out of all of us, she’s the one who could use someone the most right now.”

Gold stared back at him in silent disagreement, eliciting a chuckle from Jefferson.

“Ah, well, yea. Lacey’s always been the firecracker,” he acknowledged. “ She was always quick to go off but her temper never stayed hot too long. Belle’s the one who could forge steel. She can hold a grudge, but she can be made to see reason.”

Belle had barely been able to look at him when he left. He had parted from the group with a heavy heart, guilty at his success in continuing the ruse. Yet, here stood Jefferson, telling him that he had done the right thing.

“Okay,” Gold said with a nod. “But what happens when Lacey wakes up?”

“Let me handle that,” Jefferson said with a wink. “Oh and it’s been killing me-how did you know about the--”

Jefferson gestured at his own chest with a raised brow.

“Ah,” Gold started, more than ready to be completely honest about everything.

“Actually, you know what?” Jefferson said as held up both hands as if to ward the truth off. “I don’t want to know.” He tapped his temple, “More fun that way.”

With that, he turned and headed back down the stairs with a wave. “See you at the hospital!” he called out over his shoulder. Gold watched him go, and only when he heard the door to the street open, did he open his own door.

Only to immediately slam it closed again.

“Selena!” he hissed through the wood. “What are you doing?”

He had to hold the knob firm as she tried to twist it open. “I made myself comfortable,” she purred through the door.

“In my shirt?” he demanded.

“It’s cold in here,” she said through the door. “I’m going to go curl up under the blankets…”

“Or you could put your clothes back on!” he grumbled as her footsteps padded away.

Gold was in the middle of contemplating what fresh hell he had just unleashed upon himself when he heard the sound of heels coming up the stairs. “Thank God,” he murmured as he went to meet Regina. She’d go and unclutch Selena’s claws from his apartment and take her back downstairs-

Except it wasn’t Regina.

“Belle?” he squawked.

She looked as surprised to find him there on the stairs as he was surprised to find her in his apartment building. “Oh, hi,” she said with an awkward wave. “You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here.”

“Not really,” he answered, unable to help himself. “More questions?”

“Ah, no,” she said with a guilty grin. “I actually...forgot to get Lacey’s keys back from you. Sheriff probably could use a walk-”

“Oh!” In everything this evening, he had completely forgotten about the terrier back at Lacey’s apartment. “I left the car at the hospital.”

“That's okay,” Belle said with another smile. She lingered on the step below him. “So, uh, can I get the keys?”

Gold thanked his lucky stars they were in his pocket still and not in the key dish in the apartment. He also could kill two birds with one stone. “Actually, you know what?” he said as he started down the stairs. “ I was just on my way out for a walk. I’ll join you.”

“No, I’m fine,” Belle assured him but he passed her. She had to hurry to catch up with him. “I was just going to take the blue line over towards the pier.”

“The blue line? At this hour?” he said with a raised brow. “Alone?”

No one in Chicago rode the blue line or red line alone at this time of night. It wasn’t just risky, it was like eating a jar of peanut butter with a peanut allergy.

“I don’t need protection,” Belle said as she came to a standstill at the bottom of the stair where he was waiting for her.

“Who said anything about you? I’m the one who doesn’t want to be out here alone,” Gold said. “This is Chicago.”

Belle tried to hide her smile but failed miserably. “Let’s go then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. As we all know Belle is dealing with a lot, and she has every reason to be suspicious of Gold but WHEW. Next chapter is some more Gold/Belle bonding time as they make their way through the snowy streets of Chicago.


	8. Chapter 8

Jefferson knew.

He knew Gold was not Lacey French’s fiancé, just some stranger who had been there at the right place at the right time. Not only did Jefferson know, but he was now encouraging Gold to continue the lie.

Every day that went by was another day Gold could not explain and a day closer to the moment Lacey would wake up and the truth would be revealed, but…if Jefferson had known all this time, and had not only kept the secret but supported it, maybe everyone would understand…

The lie had been born from a series of coincidences, as Gold had only been trying to help; but the road to hell was paved with the best of intentions and Gold felt as if he was an on a train rushing headlong into the unknown.

He knew one person who wouldn’t appreciate the truth, and she was walking beside him right now. An only child and father of an only child, Gold had never understood sibling dynamics and certainly did not understand the strange bond that existed between the French twins. Belle had smelled a rat the second she had heard of her sister’s so-called fiancé, and she had spent the whole day trying to prove her (completely accurate) suspicions.

Still, part of him thought she’d understand. Belle was smart and intuitive and passionate about the things she cared about. It seemed odd to think they had only met this morning. He felt as if he knew Belle, but perhaps it was because of how transparent she was. She was an open book with a determination and spirit that he found intimidating and yet intriguing. Her emotions were on her face at any given moment. At this very moment, she wouldn’t quite meet his eye, face twisted in self-aware embarrassment at their impromptu evening walk.

Her gaze was directed upwards, flicking over the buildings that lined the avenue. “Beautiful neighborhood,” she said as they passed another turn of the century building lit up in all its glory. The way the light played across her upturned face made her look as ethereal as the angels still hanging in a few of the window.

Gold had known her eyes were blue, but he hadn’t remembered them being quite that blue. He only noticed he was staring when he nearly tripped over a raised crack in the sidewalk. “I’m always thought so,” he agreed to cover his misstep. “You live in the city?”

It was only when it was out of his mouth that he realized how inappropriate that question could be misconstrued. Mercifully, Belle did not think it an odd question. “I have an apartment over by Wrigley. My old editor moved down to Florida for a new assignment but she doesn’t want to sell so I sublet.”

“You’re a writer?” he asked with genuine interest. The written word had always fascinated him, and as a young man, he had briefly toyed with the idea of studying law but he had gotten married and started working in a 9 to 5 cubicle to support his young family.

Belle rewarded him with a smile. “I work for a publishing house. Not particularly glamorous, but all the books I can carry home.”

They had to split apart slightly to allow a man walking his dog to pass. The Dalmatian sniffed curiously at them and the man tipped his umbrella at them. “Looks like snow,” the stranger warned with a knowledgeable nod towards the sky.

Gold pointed up ahead to the station already growing clear in the distance. “Not much further,” he assured Belle.

“Good,” she said with a shiver. “You look cold.”

“Probably because I am cold,” he replied honestly. He deeply regretted not grabbing a heavier coat this morning. “Are you cold?” he hurried to ask.

“This jacket’s reversible,” Belle explained though her shoulders were shivering. “I’m wearing the warm side now.”

“Oh, I see,” Gold chuckled as they began up the stairs of the station. The Windy City was not living up to its potential this far into the city, but as they neared Lake Michigan, the temperature would only continue to drop with the wind chill.

At the station turn-still, Gold flashed his transit badge and the two of them were ushered through without further ado. Belle lingered a step or two behind him until they reached the platform. A few men were clumped in a loose circle at the end of the platform, and Gold moved instinctively closer to Belle without taking his eyes off them.

The train was approaching from the west. The ride to Navy Pier wasn’t far, and he would feel better when they were seated on the train and out of the open. Chicagoans avoided the blue line at night for various reasons, but something else, something protective and fierce, made him take a step even closer to Belle, his hand going to hover just over her elbow.

She mistook his proximity for trying to stay warm and laughed. “You need a better coat,” Belle said, though she did not pull away. “That one’s falling apart.”

His mind was on the group of young men lingering towards the end of the platform, so he responded without thinking. “My son gave me this coat.”

Belle made a noise of surprise. “I didn’t know you had a son?”

Every muscle locked into place, and a muscle twitched in Gold’s jaw as he kept his gaze straight ahead as he tried to find the words to say. He forced himself to relax, glancing down at Belle. She appeared genuinely interested, no doubt trying to put her best foot forward and try to get to know her future brother-in-law after a day spent (righteously) accusing him of being a liar.

Knowing all this, Gold let his guard down and nodded. “Neal bought it from a thrift store.” Gold’s lip twitched at the memory. ”He thought it looked dapper.”

Belle smiled at his dry but fond delivery of this story but her response was lost in the hiss of air as the train arrived at the station. Gold gestured for her to board before him, grateful for the reprieve. He threw a look over his shoulder, but the group of young men had gone into a carriage further down the line.

This carriage was vacant but it still had a lingering scent of recreational marijuana and body odor. Belle chose a seat facing east, and he cautiously joined her as the train jostled forwards. Belle’s shoulder bumped his, and they shared an awkward smile as they both shifted in their seats.

“So, tell me about Neal,” Belle said. The lights of the city flickered past as the train slowed for its next stop. “Didn’t expect to get a nephew so soon, but I’d love to meet him. Does he live with his mom?”

As the train doors hissed open and a rush of cold air blew into the carriage, Gold swallowed. “He passed away a few years ago,” he said simply, careful not to look over at her.

Everyone always had the same reaction to the loss of a child. They’d inhale deeply, eyes would widen and then the look of sympathy/pity/whatever one preferred to call it would cross their face as they hurried to express their condolences.

But not Belle.

“Shit.” She thumped her forehead with her fist as if to knock some sense into her skull. “I always put my foot in my mouth,” she muttered, ‘”every time. Here I am trying to make an effort, show you I’m not a complete asshole-”

Gold couldn’t help it, he started to laugh.

“Oh, man,” Belle moaned as her eyes squeezed shut. “I’m sorry. I was just…trying.”

“Hey, there’s no need to be so hard on yourself. How were you supposed to know?”

She nodded, but there was still guilt in her averted gaze. Gold took mercy on her and leaned back in his own chair. “Neal loved this thing,” he said and tapped the bucket seat. “All he wanted to do was ride the El, talk about the El, and learn about the El. He wanted to be an engineer when he grew up.”

Belle gingerly accepted the olive branch. “How old was he?”

“Not old enough,” Gold said, a little shortly before he remembered he had been the one to initiate this conversation. He took another breath before he answered. “He would have been a little older than Emma is now actually.”

“I bet she would have liked him,” Belle said. “She’s nuts about you.” Gold shook his head in good-natured denial, but Belle nudged him with her elbow. “Everyone else is pretty fond of you too.”

They swayed in their seats as the train stopped at the last stop before their own. The lighting of the cabin cast shadows under her eyes that illuminated how exhausted Belle truly was. He knew she had been out of the country on Christmas, and he couldn’t help but wonder when the last time was she had actually slept. He forced himself to keep facing forward, but he was still all too aware of her.

Still, when Belle spoke, it took him by surprise.

“Gold, I owe you an apology… ” Knowing where this was going, Gold tried to cut her off but Belle held her hand up. “No, I need to say this. I was a jerk,” she said. “With everything…and then today’s just been…weird and I had this feeling all day something was off- call it twin intuition-“

A flush of guilt ran down his own spine, but he held his tongue. Jefferson’s words still rang in his ears, though it did not make the guilt any easier to swallow. Belle needed to talk with someone, and if he could do nothing else, he could sit here and be that person, but he wouldn’t let her feel terrible about this.

“No need to apologize,” he said softly. “You had every right to be protective.”

She shook her head. “No, but, you saved her life, and I was so hung up on-“

“Belle,” he said and she fell silent as she met his gaze. “Do not apologize for caring about the people you love. Especially to me.”

The train began to slow, and Gold stood, effectively ending the conversation. They exited and began to head in unison towards Navy Pier. Here, in the heart of downtown, there were more people; mostly tourists visiting the Windy City to ring in the New Year and some locals out to meet friends. Gold and Belle huddled close together to avoid being bumped into by strangers, falling into step with each other easily.

“Can I ask…what was he like?” Belle asked. “Neal?”

Gold buried his hands in his pockets and tried to recall a memory that was not from the hospital. “He loved maps,” he said. “His obsession for the El stemmed from his love of maps as a kid. We used to read Treasure Island-“

“I love that book,” Belle added in an aside.

He nodded. “We used to go on treasure hunts. When he got older, he started wanting to draw maps instead of following them.”

“Smart kid.”

“Incredibly,” Gold said with a father’s pride. “He used to hear about a place on TV and then go to the atlas and start plotting out how he could get there from Chicago.”

Belle laughed. “Any place he wanted to go in particular?”

“Florence,” Gold said without needing to think. “It was one of the first cities he plotted out, and he always wanted to go and see if he could get around there without any map but his own.”

That map of Florence was in a box somewhere, probably yellow with age now but Gold had no doubt that it would get anyone around Florence with ease.

“I always thought that there would be time to take him…but he got sick about a year later.”

“He sounds like a great kid,” Belle said softly, careful not to spook him out of his memories. “I’m sorry we couldn’t meet him.”

“Me too,” he agreed. “You know, in a very small way, you kind of remind me of him a little bit.”

Belle raised her eyebrows, clearly surprised albeit delighted. “I see,” she said solemnly as she expertly avoided a half-eaten hotdog someone had left on the sidewalk by going into the grass. “So, he was a very classy individual, a great listener, an avid reader who-“

“Just stepped in dog poop.”

Belle glanced backward and sure enough, saw the now crushed excrement she had plowed through. “Oh!”

“Very classy,” Gold remarked in a deadpan voice but Belle did not miss the smirk curling the corners of his lips. She shot him a very disgusted look as she hurried to scrape her shoe off against the sidewalk. “Here,” he said and offered her his arm for balance.

Belle accepted it, her mouth twitching with annoyance while also trying not to laugh. She was able to get most of it off on the curb, and when she was satisfied, she dropped his arm with a rueful laugh. The cold drifted back in and he hurried forward again.

“All right, tell me more. Where’d you grow up?”

“My, you’ve just become Miss Chatty Cathy this evening.”

She answered his smile with her own. “Fact of the matter is, I’m about to start shivering,” she admitted, “and making conversation keeps my face from freezing.”

His arm moved on its own accord as if to take her arm but he shrugged the sensation away as they turned another corner. In the distance, Lake Point Tower shone in the city lights, the end of the line. “Thank you,” Belle said abruptly, “for walking with me. I had…um…I had a good time.”

He had too. There was something genuine about Belle French. Something dogged and determined and unapologetically herself that made her an entertaining companion even when she was glaring at him or bringing up old wounds. She was just Belle, through and through, and he found it refreshing.

Caught up in his companion, he didn’t notice the underpasses of the city roads were iced. Upa head, a broken pipe had a cascade of ice crystals down the side of the wall and spilled out across the sidewalk below.

Gold’s left foot twisted out from underneath him, and he only just caught himself. “S-slippery here,” he warned Belle, and he put his arm out to forestall her. Belle took it instead and held him upright as he maneuvered the next couple of steps. Once he had his feet on solid ground, he nodded at her to join him. “Come on.”  
  
Despite her heeled wedge boots, she was able to make it across the dark patch with more confidence, though she kept a firm grip on his outstretched arm. When she joined him on the other side, she released her breath in a nervous laugh. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” he assured her. There was no one else around, save the cars passing by on the street beside them and the roll of wheels on the roads overhead. “I can take it from here,” she said with a shrug. “Just another block.”

“Got this far,” he said with a shrug of his own. “I’ll take you the rest of the way.”

He had absolutely no desire to explain he wanted to walk her rest of the way because he should absolutely not be reveling in the feeling of where their arms were still linked or noticing the floral scent of her shampoo.

“Well, you gotta watch out,” she warned him as they moved forward, arms still entwined. “A little icy.”

They were going slow, each step a careful exploration before they committed to it. Belle had the tendency to rush ahead, so Gold hung back to let her find her footing before he risked his own step. He kept trying to shake the smile from his face, but Belle’s headlong rush to get out of the ice patch and the way she would grab for him when her foot slipped ever so slightly was intoxicating.

“So, um, are you going to go see Lacey tomorrow?”

Gold had been in the middle of taking his next step, but at the question, his feet went out from beneath him. “Whoa-a!” He slipped and grabbed for the closest thing to keep him upright, which happened to be Belle. His face landed squarely on her shoulder as she grabbed him under the armpits.

“Hey!” Belle laughed. “Do not take me with you!”

“No, it’s all right,” Gold assured her as he got his footing back. He stood upright, but they were still toe to toe and their noses inches apart. “It’s not too bad, yeah,” he said, embarrassed beyond all measure and yet rather pleased with the situation.

“You got it?” Belle asked carefully as she slowly relinquished her death grip on him.

“Yeah,” he assured her just as Belle took a step backward. She hit a patch and twisted about, feet sliding outwards as she fell towards the ground. Gold grabbed her, laughing despite himself at the noise of outraged surprise that she made as he caught her just off the ground. There was grunting and laughing, the sound of their shoes slipping across the ice as loud as their breathless laughter. “This- this is- big,” he managed as Belle twisted around to use him to climb upright.

Her hands brushed against his hips and shoulders as he tried to keep them both upright, but Belle was giggling too hard to breath, and her laughter was infectious. She had his jacket bunched in one hand, face pressed in his chest now as she giggled uncontrollably. “All right,” he said as he grinned down. “All right there?”

Neither of them dared move, Belle still hanging off him. He got his foot back underneath him, just as she straightened and they were suddenly nose to nose. Her foot slid towards him, bringing her closer and they both stopped breathing.

Belle looked away first. “You all right?” he asked, suddenly unsure.

“Yea,” Belle breathed back.

“I think we’re all right now,” he said, though again neither of them moved an inch as if afraid to break some spell. Belle bit her lower lip, and Gold couldn’t tear his eyes away. “Yeah, let’s just move this way,” he suggested towards a path that looked a little less icy.

“This way,” Belle agreed, though she seemed to only be half listening. Gold focused on getting them both safely out from underneath the overpass, to Lacey’s apartment where a small dog was waiting patiently for his walk.

Gold swallowed his growl of annoyance at the treacherous ice. “This is-“

“Oh!” Belle exclaimed as her left foot shot out from underneath her. Gold’s arm went straight up as he pulled her back towards him and she skidded for a moment before she found her feet again.

“Mm,” was all he could say.

“Mm,” Belle agreed happily. “Almost there!’

If there were traffic cameras in this underpass, the hazard team would have a field day with this footage, Gold thought to himself as Belle pulled him behind her. “All right?” Belle called out behind her, though she did not dare turn around.

“Yeah,” Gold told her because he was. Though it had nothing at all to do with how he was faring across the ice at the moment, everything to do with how he felt there in that second.

“I think,” Belle said as she paused to take her next step. “We’re all right now.” She stopped as he made his way over the last bit of ice, biting her lip as she regarded the path ahead of them. They were less than two steps from the edge of the underpass, and the black ice was thinner here.

“Okay?” he asked.

She snapped out of whatever she had been thinking. “Yeah,” she assured him with an enthusiastic nod. “It just uh-“

Gold kept his eyes firmly on the tips of his loafers. The cold had disappeared as his sole focus had narrowed to staying upright lest Belle French see him fall backwards and on the warmth of her gloved hand in his own.

Belle had plunged ahead, but he felt her arm jerk in his and she whirled about and grabbed him in a bear hug as both feet went out from underneath her. Gold had been in the midst of his own step, and without balance, they both fell, though Gold was careful to wrap himself around her so she fell forward onto him.

The air went out of them as they landed on the cold, hard ground, but luckily, nothing seemed to be broken.

“Are you all right?” Belle demanded as she twisted in his arms. At his winced nod, she started to laugh. “Was that ripping sound your pants or your muscles?”

Gold glowered at her, not daring to risk checking. Belle started laughing even harder as she clambered to her feet. “Give me your hand,” she said as he climbed ungracefully on all fours. “Give me your hand,” she repeated as he stayed there on the ground, trying to figure out the best way to get up.

He reached up to clasp her wrist. “Whoa-ho!” she exclaimed but she caught herself. “Okay. Come on!”

“Hmm,” he chuckled as he slowly made his way, bent in half back to his feet.

“Oh, man,” Belle was laughing again, and it softened his wounded pride. He smiled back, enjoying the way the cold brought color to her cheeks. Cars kept racing past them, and no doubt someone had thoroughly enjoyed the show, but he couldn’t bring himself to care a bit.

“You have an extra pair of pants in Lacey’s apartment?”

“Uh, I don’t … keep anything there.”

“Oh, yea, I forgot,” Belle said with a shake of her head. “Lacey’s stupid rules.”

Gold didn’t bother to ask what those rules meant. A car passed by and honked their horn at the two of them, and Belle waved back at them. The next car started to flash their lights and honk, and Gold wanted to sink into the concrete as the next few followed suit.

They made it out from underneath the underpass, where the salt had been able to do its job thanks to the sun. Gold straightened, with a groan, as his back popped. Belle had moved ahead, and he had to hurry to catch up.

“You don’t have to follow me,” she said as she pointed to the building straight ahead.

“You block the wind,” he pointed out. “I’ll wait till you get inside,”

Belle nodded as they made their way the last block. When they reached the corner, the lobby door lit brightly as a taxi lingered just outside of it, she stopped short. “Well, good night,” she murmured, not quite meeting his eye.

“Night,” he replied back, though his feet did not make the move towards the miracle of a vacant taxi. Sometimes while they had been skidding around on ice, snow had started to fall, collecting on the curls falling over her shoulder.

The wind was biting here, and his back was sore from his fall, but Gold could not would not, pull himself away. “So, I’ll see you when I see you?” Belle asked him, lingering there on the sidewalk with him.

“Yeah,” he agreed, though he had no idea what he was agreeing to at that moment.

He had no idea what he would have done at that moment if the taxi had not rolled his window down at that moment. “Hey buddy,” he called. “You need a ride?”

Belle chuckled and looked away, and the spell was broken. “Night,” she mumbled and without further ado, she disappeared into the condominiums. Gold lingered there a moment longer, trying to understand what had just happened and failing miserably.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys enjoyed some Belle/Gold time-- next chapter everyone is back!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I'm as surprised as anyone there was an update so quickly but here you go! Thanks to Prissy and Lady Anne for your reviews last chapter.

“I’m having an affair.”

Gold hadn’t slept. He hadn’t eaten. He had spent all evening tossing and turning, trying to figure out why he couldn’t get Belle French off his mind. He was a grown man, twice her age and supposedly engaged to her identical twin sister, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

So, Gold didn’t bother with any of the niceties as he collapsed into the chair opposite Regina’s desk. He dropped his head into his lap, as he confessed what he had finally come to accept. “I-I like Belle.”

“Who’s Belle?”

Gold lifted his head just enough to mutter, “Lacey’s sister.”

Regina shrugged and returned back to her book. “So?”

“So,” Gold grumbled. “She thinks I’m engaged to her identical twin sister.”

Regina sighed as she looked back up from her book. “Gold, I really don’t have time for this,” she warned him. “You already owe me for getting Selena out of your apartment. After you invited her inside and then left her there, I just assumed that was your notice.”

Selena had surprisingly done no damage to the apartment, though he hadn’t really inspected to see if anything was missing. He supposed he had Regina to thank for his apartment being intact upon his return home, but he had bigger fish to fry.

“You always have an opinion on everything,” Gold said with a wave of his hand. “What would you do?”

Regina wavered for a moment. “Tell the truth,” she suggested finally with a half-hearted shrug.

Gold sighed and rubbed his face. He had barely been able to sleep last night, recalling the way Belle had looked down at him as they had laid there on the ice, the way her scent clung to his jacket and -

“If I tell Belle the truth, she will never speak to me again. Hell, she’ll probably have me arrested. And-and Mary Margaret and David and Emma and Jefferson-”

Regina held up her hands in a timeout motion. “Jefferson?” she repeated. “Who’s Jefferson?”

“He’s Lacey’s best friend. But you know what? Actually, he knows that we’re not really engaged, so-’

“Gold,” Regina said as she snapped her book shut. “You a born into a family. You do not join them like you do the Marines.”

“I didn't mean for any of this to happen,” Gold protested as Regina stood and moved toward the kitchen. Gold leaned back into the chair and draped his arm over his eyes. He hadn’t really expected much, but it still felt like a relief to confess to someone, anyone what he was really thinking...it made it easier for him to understand it himself.

“If you want my advice, pull the plug,” Regina said over her shoulder.

“You are sick,” Gold called after her.

“I’m sick?” Regina shouted back from the kitchen. “You’re cheating on a vegetable!”

\--

Belle checked her cards, a pair of sevens and a pair of aces with a lone Jack in the mix. She tapped her finger on the surface, before checking her opponent for any tells. “Are you gonna fold?”

Lacey lay motionless, her heart monitor beeping quietly beside them.

Belle clicked her tongue. “You’re not gonna fold.”

Belle leaned over to swipe the five cards from in front of Lacey and glanced at them. “Ooh, she is staying in with a pair. Very impressive,” Belle noted as she sat back. “Very bold, confident.”

With a cocksure smile, Belle laid out her cards, lining up her sevens and aces with the matching cards on the flop. “Full house,” she declared as she gathered the cards back into her hand. “You always were unlucky at cards, Lace.”

Belle shuffled the cards, her mind elsewhere now. “But lucky in love,” she admitted as her mind went straight back to the only topic she had been able to focus on today: Truman Gold.

It was like Belle was back in middle school again. All she could think of was their walk last night, how he had made her laugh, how his hand felt in her’s...she wanted nothing more than to see him, which was why she had spent the whole day in the hospital, playing poker with her sister, in the off chance he might drop by.

“Remember in like, uh, fifth or sixth grade, I was starting to get really good at poker, and uh, going home with lots of lunch money?” Belle asked her sister as she started to deal the cards again. “It was when mom was sick...and I got to know the principal’s office really well. He always used to say to me, ‘How come you can’t be more like your sister?’”

They had been identical, but Lacey had always been the golden child. Belle had never been able to replicate the easy way Lacey had with people. Lace could win anyone over within minutes while Belle was always too brash, too strange, too different. So, instead, Belle had preferred to hone her skills and use them to her advantage whether it be the test she stayed up all night to ace, poker skills to pay the bills when their father spent the money on booze or learning French to move to Quebec when she turned eighteen.

“Well, you know a secret?” Belle said. “I was all right with that. I had no problems with that because I was proud of you.”

Lacey had been class president every year since middle school, had been cast in the leadoff nearly every play, captain of the cheerleading squad, on the academic honor roll, and always found time to volunteer. She had even saved some kids from a junkyard dog once; her pictures had been in the paper for weeks. The scars on her right arm were still visible. It had been why Belle had been so taken aback by Sheriff, now comfortably staying with the Blanchards despite Mary Margaret's half-hearted protests.

“You know, I was never envious of anything that you had,” Belle told her sister. “Until now.”’

She didn’t know how it happened. Gold had been flustered when they met, and he had made her smile despite herself, and if she was being honest, Selena had gotten under her skin yesterday. She had so badly wanted to believe Gold wasn’t being truthful...she had spent the entire day trying to trip him up, hoping…

Hoping that he wasn’t marrying her sister because he had the most beautiful brown eyes, and his voice made her melt and how was she going to sit across from him at Thanksgiving for the rest of her life when she just wanted to know if he tasted as good as he smelled.

“I’ll cut the deck,” Belle decided. “High card gets Gold.”

She split the deck unevenly, seventy to thirty, and flipped the two cards. In her hand, she held a four, and Lacey was dealt a Jack. Belle stared at for a moment and then nodded.

“All right, then. We’ll go best out of three.”

\--

As it turned out, Belle did not have to wait too long to see Gold again. By the time she got home, there were three messages on her machine. One from Mary Margaret inviting her over for dinner, one from Jefferson asking her if she was going to go over for dinner, and one from Emma demanding her to come over for dinner.

The fact that Jefferson had mentioned Gold had agreed to come had nothing to do with her accepting their offer or the reason she had put on her favorite blue eyelet dress. She sat across the table from Gold, a silly smile as he caught her eye shyly and returned his own gaze back down to his food. Under the table, Sheriff panted happily as nearly everyone at the table slipped him something from their plates.

“So, Gold, have you and Lacey decided where you’re going to go on your honeymoon?” David asked as he handed Gold the gravy bowl.

It may have been Belle’s imagination but it looked as if Gold almost dropped it.

“I went to Cuba,” Jefferson announced as he leaned past Mary Margaret to grab a roll.

“What’s so nice about Cuba?” Emma asked.

“Ricky Ricardo was Cuban,” her mother answered in a deft change of subject as she piled some more mashed potatoes on her daughter’s plate.

“Didn’t Lacey look great today?” David asked Gold. “I stopped by this afternoon on my way home, and the doctors say the swelling is almost gone.”

Belle looked up and caught Gold’s eye, both of them quickly dropping their gazes back down to their own plates.

“Oh, that girl,” Jefferson chuckled. “You know, she should have been an actress.”

“She’s got that special something,” Mary Margaret agreed. “All the great ones do.”

“What special something?” Emma demanded, though no one was paying her much attention. Gold was staying rather silent, but a smile was still on the corners of his mouth as he worked through the mass amounts of food Mary Margaret had dumped on his plate. Belle saw him sneak a piece of ham beneath the table and heard Sheriff’s sharp inhalation of excitement.

“Gold,” David said, “you think you could find a nice guy for Belle?”

Still focused on sneaking Sheriff a bite, Gold was caught unaware and nearly choked on his own food.

Belle did her best to come to the rescue. “Oh, come on, guys,” Belle chuckled awkwardly as she lowered her wine glass. She didn’t dare look at Gold, sure her face would give her away in a second if she did. “Not this again.”

“Well, I-I-I-I really don’t know Belle’s type,” Gold said, now coming to her rescue. “So, I’m not one to, um-”

“I like blondes,” Belle muttered, unable to look up from her plate.”Big Ones. Like Vikings.”

Emma’s eyes were on her, but Belle ignored it as she shoveled more food into her mouth. Hopefully, she’d choke and be put out of her misery. A silence fell, the only sound the clatter of dishes and sounds of chewing. Under the table, Sheriff nuzzled against her legs, clearly hoping she’d drop something.

Jefferson, as usual, couldn’t stand the silence. “Katherine Hepburn had that special something.”

“So did Hedy Lamarr,” David agreed.

“Who are you talking about?” Emma demanded. “I don’t know any of these people.”

“Well, we all know who Gold’s type is.” Mary Margaret whispered over to him with a wink and a nudge.

Gold smiled politely, and his eyes flickered up to Belle.

“These mashed potatoes are so creamy,” Jefferson said through a mouthful of them. He raised his fork at Mary Margaret in praise. A glop fell on the floor beside him, and Sheriff zoomed over to Jefferson’s side.

Emma, having enough of the grown-ups talking in circles, turned to Belle. “You like older men,” she announced. Across the table, Gold’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth as Belle’s face flushed in mortification.

Thankfully no one else seemed to hear it.

“I could never make a good pot roast,” Jefferson said with a shake of his head.

“You need good beef,” Mary Margaret told him.

“Argentina has great beef,” Jefferson said with a nod. “Cuba not so much.”

Belle shook her head. None of this roundabout conversation was new to their little family, but the dynamic of Gold across from her threw her off, and everything seemed magnified beyond reason. For his part, he seemed to enjoy it, though his eyes occasionally met hers as if to share the amusement.

“Marilyn Monroe had it,” David continued from their earlier conversation.

“Lucille Balle too,” Jefferson pointed out.

David stared at him. “Would you want to see Lucille Balle with Bogart?”

“The mashed potatoes are so creamy,” Mary Margaret said loudly as if to bring the attention away from the danger zone it was approaching.

“Spain has good beef,” Gold added, nonchalantly. Belle had to raise a napkin to her lips to prevent anyone from seeing her laughing. His eyes met her briefly, sparkling in their private joke and her chest constricted.

“Emma mashed them,” Mary Margaret continued as if someone had asked her.

“Mae West,” David said definitely.

“Mae West wasn’t Spanish,’ Jefferson argued.

“I didn’t say Mae West was Spanish,” David protested, having missed Gold’s one-liner.

“Well, what did you say?”

“I said Mae West had that special something.”

“We all know she’s got that je ne sais quoi.”

“Well, that’s what I said,” David repeated in annoyance.

Belle was in near hysterics behind her napkin, while Gold grinned across from her, his eyes dancing. Whenever someone said something in his general direction, he would nod in agreement and then his eyes would find her to share the joke.

By the time dinner had ended, Belle’s sides hurt and she was incandescently happy. She and Gold walked toward the door as Jefferson fixed himself a plate for lunch in the morning. Emma trailed after them, holding a stuffed Sheriff in her arms. The little dog licked her face, clearly well adjusted to his new surroundings. He’d be fifty pounds in a week.

“So, if you need any help with math, don’t call me,” Gold told Emma with a wink. He had spent the last hour advising her on history, and Belle could not shake the fond smile she and Emma were both wearing.

“Now, remember, Gold,” Mary Margaret said as she handed them their jackets. “If you’re free for New Year’s, we want to see you.”

He smiled. “Thank you very much,” he told her as he handed Belle her jacket. “I had a great time.”

“Us too,” Mary Margaret assured him as Belle pulled open the door.

“Thanks for coming!” Emma piped up as Gold turned to say goodbye to everyone.

“Bye,” he said with a nod to them all. Belle lingered there in the doorway as everyone else called out the goodbyes, hoping to say a quick word to him before he left. His taxi was already waiting out front; Jefferson had already suggested Belle split one home with him since Wrigley was on the way, effectively ruining her plan to suggest taking the El with Gold again.

“Hey, look you guys!” Emma called out. “You’re under the mistletoe.”

Both their heads snapped up to find a sprig of mistletoe there above the frame. Belle almost suspected it had popped into being there and then, and she was absurdly thrilled about it. She checked to see Gold’s reaction, their eyes locked before they both glanced away as the giggles that had plagued them all night threatened to return.

Jefferson made a noise of approval as he joined them, stuffing a wing into his mouth. “Kiss her then!’ he said happily.

“Yeah!” Emma said with a clap of her hands.

“It’s mistletoe,” Mary Margaret said with a shrug as if even she couldn’t argue with that.

“It’s tradition,” her husband agreed as he draped his arm over his wife. His wink down at her made it clear who had hung it there in the first place, and Mary Margaret blushed prettily as she leaned up to deposit a kiss on his cheek.

“Well...It is Christmas,” Belle said softly so only Gold could hear. He looked back at her, and despite it being a day before New Year, he nodded as if he wholeheartedly agreed.

“Come on, Gold. Kiss her.”

Belle didn’t have a chance to figure out who said that so she could thank them, because Gold was shuffling his weight, looking at her as if he wasn’t sure this was okay. Belle smiled, uncertain as well, but she kept eye contact so when he leaned in, she met him halfway.

Their lips brushed against each other for the briefest of seconds before sliding to press briefly against each other’s cheeks. His stubble scratched the sensitive skin of her jaw, and Belle had to clutch her fingers in the hem of her sleeves to prevent from reaching out and grabbing him for a proper kiss. She inhaled sharply as he pulled away, so she missed his own soft exhale of “Wow.”

The room erupted into scattered applause. “There ya go,”Mary Margaret said to her daughter. “Now, come help me in the kitchen.”

“But-!”

“Bye,” Gold said and he did not wait for a second longer before disappearing down the stairs.

Belle closed the door, and went to follow him, but stopped short to lean against the door frame. Behind her, her family laughed and chattered as they went around to cleaning up and she watched for just a moment longer as Gold disappeared into the taxi.

He didn’t look back, and so with another heavy sigh, her lips still tingling, Belle closed the door and disappeared back inside.

\--

Back in Lacey's now empty apartment, the phone rang- one-two-three- and then the answering machine clicked on.

"Lacey? Hi, it's Keith. Is, is this machine working?" The voice paused and added a rueful chuckle. "Okay, look, I'm back in Chicago and, uh, kind of shocked that you haven't called me back. Look, I really would, uh, like to hear from you, and I'd like to see my dog."

There was silence.

"Call me."

And then the line went dead, and the apartment was quiet once more. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to finish this one up- not sure if there is a lot of interest in this, so if you are enjoying it, let me know in the comments.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit guys- thank you all for that great response on the last chapter letting me know you guys were there and invested. I know I have not responded to them, but hopefully a new chapter and my internal thank yous will suffice.

Gold spent New Year’s Eve morning mostly on autopilot. As the rush hour commute dwindled in the quiet hours before lunch, he lounged in his seat, accepting tokens and changing out bills for the fare.

His mind was not on the tingling in his fingertips as the cold of Chicago blew through the till window, or even on the fact he had been unfortunate enough to be scheduled with the one coworker he could not stand. (Her name was Tracy Keegan, but everyone at the station referred to her as ‘Mother Superior’ due to her no-nonsense, by the book attitude)

No, instead, his mind drifted back to relive every moment of last night’s dinner, where Belle’s smile and stifled giggles featured heavily. He hadn’t flirted in quite some time...but he was fairly certain they had been, in fact, flirting.

“Regular fare,” another faceless commuter requested, and Gold changed out the offered dollar bills to a token without so much as looking up.

Belle had sat across from him, and he had been so distracted by how the dress she wore was the same color of her eyes, he had almost missed his mouth a few times while eating. And then Emma had made that comment about Belle liking older men…

So, when he had found himself under the mistletoe, Gold had ignored the million and fourteen reasons he should have just slipped out the door with an excuse, and instead kissed her. But as soon as he let himself relax into the feeling of Belle’s lips against his own, the memory of Lacey in her hospital bed had come crashing through his reverie like a runaway train.

Of course, Belle wasn’t flirting, he told himself on the taxi ride home. She was being nice to her future-brother-in-law. Her twin was in the hospital, would wake up any day, and reveal the fact that not only was she not engaged to Gold, she had never met him before in her life.

He was so caught up in his own mental flagellation he did not recognize the voice at the window. “One token, please.”

In one smooth motion, he took the offered money and dropped the token into the basin. When the commuter did not immediately go to collect, he looked up to find Emma grinning at him. “Emma!” he exclaimed as a welcoming grin broke out over his face. “What are you doing here?’

“Going down to the museum for an art project,” Emma said with a grimace as she gestured toward her companion. She was the same age as Emma with brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a curious look on her face as she stared back at him through the glass.

“Nothing like waiting for the last minute,” the other young woman agreed.

“We thought we’d stop by to say hi,” Emma explained as she craned her neck to get a better view of the booth where Gold sat. “

“Do you ladies want to come through?” he asked. They had a few minutes before the next train

Emma’s face lit up with delight. “We can?”

No, not technically, but he wasn’t going to worry about that. “Yeah, absolutely,” Gold assured her before waving the two teens around to the door.

On the other side, Mother Superior looked up from her own empty window with a disapproving scowl as the two girls spilled into the relative warmth of the ticket booth. “Who’s this?” she demanded.

Picking up on the animosity, Emma tried to smooth the tension with a friendly smile. “I’m Emma. This is Lily.”

The other girl simply waved. “Hi,” she said before turning her attention back to Gold. She elbowed Emma with a raised brow and a not too subtle nod towards Gold.

“Um, Lilly, this is...my, um…” Emma struggled with how to exactly introduce him, and it occurred to Gold that Emma may not know his first name.

Gold took pity on her. He offered his hand to the young woman. “Truman Gold.”

“He’s going to marry my godmother, Lacey,” Emma explained.

Mother Superior was blatantly eavesdropping, and at this, she shook her head in disbelief but thankfully, she did not interject.

“Truman?” Lily repeated. “That’s a pretty weird name.”

“Lily,” Emma chided.

Gold couldn’t help but chuckle. “I agree,” he told her. “I usually just go by Gold.”

“I like Truman,” Emma said, stressing the verb with a pointed look at her friend.

In the distance, a whistle broke through the city noise. “The train,” Gold said with a nod towards the platform.

“Okay,” Lily said. “Nice meeting you, Truman Gold.”

“The train,” Emma repeated as she pointed towards the door. “Okay. Uh. I’ll see you later.” She paused before adding, “Truman.”

He smiled, answering her unspoken question. “Thank you for coming by, ladies,” he said as Emma pulled the door open. “It was nice to meet you, Lily,” he added as the other girl grabbed the door from her friend.

The door hadn’t even closed behind them when Mother Superior whipped around on her stool. “You dying or something?” she narrowed her eyes. “Is that why you’re getting married?”

Whatever he had expected her to say, it hadn’t been that. “Yes, I’m dying,” he deadpanned, not quite noticing Lily paused on the other side of the still ajar door fumbling for her gloves. “Hadn’t you heard?”

Mother Superior shot him a dark look as Lily rushed by the window towards where Emma was waving for her to join her. “Haha,” Mother Superior grumbled before turning back to her window. “As if anyone would marry you.”

Gold ignored her and turned back to help the lunch crowd starting to appear at the window, unaware that Lily was now on a train filling Emma in on what she had overheard, having completely misunderstood the art of sarcasm.

\--

Belle curled up on her favorite armchair at the Nolans with a glass of champagne in her hand as Mary Margaret poured herself another glass of wine. Jefferson and David sat on the couch with a couple of beers. The television set was turned on to the news as a crowd in Times Square gathered to celebrate the New Year.

It felt weird to be here, celebrating but the doctors had told the New Year’s Eve would not have visiting hours. The emergency room always ran rampant on holidays, and they needed nurses to be able to move through the halls freely without tripping over family members.

Belle was….not in the best of moods. Gold had called to let David know he had to decline their invitation for New Year’s, having previously made plans. Belle didn’t want to picture what those plans would entail, it would only worsen her mood.

So, Belle stared into the fire morosely as she finished her second-no third- glass of champagne and half listened to her friends' chatter. “New Year’s Eve hasn’t been the same since Guy Lombardo died,” Jefferson declared to the room as Dick Clark appeared on the screen.

“You were not old enough to vote when Guy Lombardo died,” Mary Margaret reminded him.

“I love a good clarinet,” David said, half listening, as a new commercial came on with the instrument in question leading the jingle’s theme of some laundry detergent. “You know, nobody plays the clarinet anymore.”

“Guy Lombardo didn’t play the clarinet,” Jefferson said with a frown at his friend.

“I didn’t say Guy Lombardo played the clarinet.”

“You know, Benny Goodman-”

“Hey,” Belle said before this went any further. “Emma’s home.”

Sure enough, there was a rush of footsteps and the front door was thrown open to reveal the teen, wide-eyed and out of breath. “Gold’s dying!” she announced before anyone had a chance to speak.

The room went eerily quiet, the television set the only sound. David was the first one to find his voice.”How did you find out?” he asked as if that was the first question that needed to be answered.

“What do you mean he’s dying?” Belle asked as she stood abruptly. Too abruptly; the room started to spin.

“How do you know?” Jefferson interjected.

“Where have you been?” Mary Margaret demanded, ignoring the bombshell entirely.

“That’s what Lily said,” Emma said to the room, taken aback by the backlash her announcement had caused amongst the adults. She looked from one to another, clearly uncertain by their drawn faces. “We heard it at the token booth today when we stopped by to see him.”

“Belle, do you know anything about this?” Mary Margaret said as she spun to her.

Belle could only stare down at her glass. Her fingers were trembling, and she felt as if she was going to be sick. It was too hot in here, too stifling. There was too much noise- she had to get out.

Belle brushed past Emma toward the front door. She put her champagne flute down by the door, before grabbing her jacket and disappearing out into the evening.

David cleared his throat. “Emma, go to your room.”

“What?” Emma demanded. “Why? I didn’t do anything!”

Belle did not hear his excuse as the front door slammed behind her.

Gold couldn’t be dying. He couldn’t. Though...it might explain his dry sense of humor or the way he didn’t like to talk about himself. Not to mention he had jumped onto a track to save Lacey, risking his own life….

Belle shook her head and hailed the first cab she saw. She’d pay a fortune on New Year’s Eve, but she needed to see Gold.

\--

Across town, Gold lingered in his room despite the late hour. Below him, the courtyard of Storybrooke Apartments was festive in string lights and crammed with people as the Mills Sisters threw their annual New Year’s Eve Bash.

Everyone from the neighborhood was invited, and with the tourists and crowds thronging the streets of downtown, the Logan Square inhabitants were more than happy to join the festivities in their own backyard.

Regina had caught him in the hallway that morning to remind him of his expected attendance, and he had been grateful to accept, not sure he could face a New Year’s celebration with Belle French within arm’s reach. Their kiss last night had been...complicated, and he did not trust himself enough to tempt fate a second time.

The sooner Lacey woke up, the sooner he could get his life back in order and stop thinking about the way Belle’s blue eyes fluttered shut or the way her breath ghosted over his lips.

As he started thinking about this exact thing, there was a sharp knock on the door. “Who is it?” he called out as he made his way to the door.

“Selena.”

He stopped short of the door. “I’m not here,” he attempted.

There was a huff of annoyance. “I know that trick,” Selena grumbled. “I have a set of keys…”

Gold swore under her breath. “That is illegal, and you know it, Selena.,” he growled as he threw open the door to give her a piece of his mind- only to find himself face to face with a horseshoe made of flowers.

Selena popped her head around the edge with a smile. “Ta-da! I told them to give me the same ones they use in the winner’s circle at Arlington.”

Gold furrowed his brow, not quite understanding.

“Because you’re used to jockey, and you like horses,” Selena stammered as he stared uncomprehendingly at the flowers. She paused as if considering her information. “Didn’t you?”

Gold simply sighed. “They’re...beautiful,” he said as he gestured vaguely toward the floral monstrosity as large as his television set. “But I can’t accept them.”

Selena lowered the flowers, and he only then noticed her bottom lip was trembling. “I could move in here,” she offered with a vague gesture at his apartment. “I bet Regina would knock a few bucks off the rent.”

“I have six months left to live.”

“Aw,” Selena smiled through her eyes were starting to brim with tears. “You’re just trying to make me feel better. It’s that other girl, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

Selena chuckled, a rueful sound that was accented by a sniffle. “The brunette. I’ve seen the way you look at her,” she explained with a shrug of her shoulders.

“What?” Gold demanded self-consciously. “How do I--How do I look at her?” he asked casually, starting to sweat slightly at the idea others may have noticed.

“Like you just bought your first Louboutins,” Selena sighed. “Aw, here, just take em. You can lay them on my coffin,” she joked with a twitch of her shoulder.

“Thank you,” Gold murmured as he took the offered flowers. He dangled the horseshoe awkwardly as Selena lingered there on his doorstep. Her attempt at an apology was genuine, he could tell by the money she had spent on the flowers and the way she was carefully standing just out of reach of the door.

She raised her arms in a request for an embrace. Her face was wary but hopeful as if she was a stray waiting to be kicked away. Gold’s breath caught. He had spent the last few years alone and had preferred it that way, but the past few days had...changed him. With a mumble, he stepped out into the hallway with tense shoulders for the world’s most awkward hug.

As Selena leaned into his arms, he did not see Belle’s face at the landing of the stairs, or her wide eyes as she disappeared back into the shadows.

Gold was in the middle of patting Selena’s back and counting down the seconds until he could let go without being rude when Selena whispered in his ear. You know...I’m wearing black underwear.”

He nearly fell on his ass as he released her and stumbled backward. “Damn it, Selena!” he groused.

“What?” she demanded with wide eyes. “I thought you’d like them!”

Gold closed the door pointedly behind him and waited to hear Selena’s footsteps disappear down the stairs before he turned back to his apartment. The empty space stared back at him, and he placed the flowers by the window in the living room, only to find it made the space feel even more lonely.

Gold took his time getting ready. He could appreciate Selena’s apology, but there were other things on his mind and he wanted to make a brief of an appearance as possible at the party below. Music drifted up to him, and the sound of laughter and cheers but it was nearly freezing outside tonight, and he didn’t want to linger any longer than the toll of the midnight bell.

Bell.

Belle.

As he finished buttoning his shirt, there was a knock at the door. Fully expecting it to be one of the Mills sisters come to drag him downstairs, he threw it open with a scowl, only to find the person he had just been thinking of before him as if he had summoned her. “Belle? What are you doing here?”

She stared blankly back at him. “You’re going to a party,” she said with a shake of her head.

“Yeah,” Gold agreed in confusion. “My friend Regina is having a party tonight.”

“Great,” Belle said with a nod. “I’ll walk you.”

“Oh, you know what?” he said. “It’s really not that far. It’s-”

Belle did not let him explain it was the party outside she must have walked straight through. “It’s fine!” Belle assured him, rather loudly.

“You okay?” Gold asked in concern as he noticed the slight lean and bright eyes that signified one too many drinks.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Belle demanded as her hands went to her hips.

“You’re just acting really….weird,” Gold said as he grabbed his jacket off the hook by the door.

“No, no,” Belle protested. “I’m not being weird.”

“Yes, you are,” Gold teased her as he locked the door behind him.

“So,” she said, just a little too loudly. “How are you feeling?”

  
Gold kept walking to mask his confusion and growing uneasy feeling. “Fine?”

Belle blew some air out of her nose as she tried to figure out what she wanted to say next. Gold kept quiet as they exited the staircase and headed toward the courtyard. The noise was growing louder here, and Belle had to raise her voice to be heard. “You and Lacey are going to have a lot to deal with when she wakes up.”

The door flew open and a gale swept inside to usher them into the night air. “Gold!” Regina exclaimed as turned from a nearby group.

“Hi,” he said with a wave as Belle stumbled to a stop at his elbow.

“Oh, come on over here!” Regina called as she ushered them both over. “Hey, everybody, Gold and his fiance are here!”

Belle made a strangled noise and turned as if to head back into the staircase, but the crowd swept around them, cutting off her escape.

“Gold! How’s it going?” Regina asked as she put her arm around his shoulder. “Jerry, you know Lacey, right?” she asked as one someone came up to hand Gold and Belle both glasses of champagne.

“Thank you,” Belle said, her knuckles white against the plastic flute. Jerry started to chat with her, though Gold couldn’t quite hear what he was saying.

“Here’s a hat,” Regina said as she grabbed one of her own head. Gold rolled his eyes as Regina clutched his shoulder to keep balanced. “Geez, she looks good,” she confided to him with a nod towards Belle.

“That’s not Lacey,” he grumbled as he tried to keep her upright. “That’s Belle.”

Regina closed one eye in concentration as she peered at him. “Uh, who’s Belle again?”

He sighed. “Lacey’s twin sister.”

“Lacey’s the one in a coma?”

“Yeah.”

Regina frowned. “So, then why did you bring Belle?”

“I didn’t bring Belle!” Gold erupted. He forced himself to take a deep breath, but there was too much noise and confusion around him. “She came over-”

“So, Belle is the fiance?”

“No, Lacey.”

“Lacey doesn’t even know you exist,” Regina reminded him.

“I know.”

Regina handed a passerby her glass before turning and taking his face in her hands. “Gold,” she said solemnly as she looked deep into his eyes.

“Yeah?”

“They have doctors for this kind of thing.”

Belle reappeared at his side, and Regina dropped her hands to grab the sill full flute from Gold. “Thanks!” she cheered before she disappeared back into the crowd.

Gold promptly started to look around for another. “Is that...a good idea?” Belle asked as politely as possible.

“Why not?” His question was barely audible over the music. It was that new terrible dance song number they had been playing everywhere non-stop. He personally couldn’t stand it; thankfully it was almost over-

“Because you’re dying!” Belle shouted back at him- just as the music went silent as the song came to an end. The entire crowd turned to look at the loud announcement, including Regina. As her eyes met his over the crowd, she simply sipped her champagne with a pointed shake of her head.

\--

“Gold, wait!”

He didn’t turn around as he rounded the corner of Storybrooke Apartments. Belle was right behind him, and she managed to catch up easily enough despite her stiletto heels. He had lingered just long enough to clear up the misunderstanding but had no interest in staying to revel in his own embarrassment.

“Look,” Belle said, “This whole evening did not work out well at all and-”

“Oh, and I’m supposed to share some responsibility in that?” he asked with a sardonic raise of his brow.

“Would you slow down a little bit?” Belle called from behind him. “I didn’t mean it like that- I just-Look. It was just a misunderstanding and on top of the whole Selena thing-”

“What Selena thing?” he asked with a wrinkle of his forehead.

“It’s nothing,” Belle tried but Gold shook his head.

“No, no, no. There’s no nothing now. What Selena thing?”

Belle huffed. “The...leaning thing,” she said as she looked away.

“The leaning thing?” Gold repeated, unable to stay annoyed at the guilty look on Belle’s face.

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Gold said with a dark chuckle. “What do you-- What do you mean by the ‘leaning thing’?” Something clicked. Belle had been in the apartment... she must have seen Selena stop by his place. “Because she gave me flowers?”

Grateful he understood, Belle nodded emphatically. “And then you leaned,” Belle insinuated as she took a step closer towards him as she pressed her point.

“And then I leaned,” Gold repeated, unable to help the amusement in his voice at the layer of meanings she inundated into that one word.

“Yeah,” Belle drawled out as she came closer.

“Okay,” he said with an indulging smile. “How did I lean...when I leaned?”

They had found some sort of truce in this joke, but there was something else lingering between the two of them. “How were you leaning?” Belle repeated with a raise of her own brows as if she was surprised he didn’t know.

“Yeah,” he challenged her.

Belle didn’t skip a beat. “It was a lot different than hugging.”

“Hugging is different,” Gold agreed sotto voice.

“Hugging,” Belle clarified for him as she came closer. “That involves arms and hands, and leaning is whole bodies moving in, like this….”

She was close enough for him to smell the sweet scent of champagne on her breath, and he stayed utterly still as his brain tried to get his feet to move, anything to break the spell she had him under on the snow-covered sidewalk.

“Leaving involves wanting…” Belle continued as her eyes flickered to where his mouth was parted,” and accepting.” She took a deep breath but did not back down. “Leaning,” she said softly.

“Hey, Rum,” a voice called out from the corner and they both turned to find Selena. “Is she bothering you?”

The spell was broken. Belle looked down at her feet as she shook her head.

“No,” Gold assured Selena, half thankful she had intervened and half annoyed at the trainwreck of this entire evening.

“Are you sure?” Selena said as she surveyed Belle’s nervous body language. “Because it looked like she was leaning.”

Belle burst out into laughter as she turned to Gold with a cat that ate the canary grin She turned back to Selena. “Thank you,” she called to her before turning back to Gold. “See?”

“I’ll be over here if you need me,” Selena shouted back, still lingering on the corner.

“Okay,” Gold nodded. “Bye, Selena.”

“I know karate,” the redhead warned Belle with a menacing nod before she turned and headed back towards the party. Belle chuckled before she moved over to lean on the building to look up at the sky.

“Okay,” Gold said as he joined her. “Now- All right. What about the other...thing?”

“The other thing?” Belle said. “The other misunderstanding?”

He nodded. “Why did you think I was dying.”

Belle winced. “Well, Emma said that she had heard something like that…”

“And you believed her?

Belle glowered. “I didn’t have any reason not to believe her,” she said sharply.

This was not the answer Gold had expected, and he bristled as Mother Superior’s voice came back to him from this morning. “So, you’re saying the only reason your sister would want to marry someone like me...is if I was dying? Some charity case?”

“No,” Belle said but he was already turning away. “No!” she repeated louder this time. “Gold-”

“Good night,” he said pointedly as he headed towards the nearest entrance.

“The fact is you’re not really Lacey’s type,” Belle called out from behind him.

“Is that right, Belle?” he said as he twisted around to face her. “All right, whose type am I?”

Belle opened her mouth and closed it. No words came out.

Gold just nodded. “Thank you,” he said and turned away from her once more so she couldn’t see the hurt on his face.

“It’s just not that obvious to the whole world, that’s all,” Belle tried to explain, but at that point, he had enough.

“You know what, Belle? I’ve had a really lousy Christmas. You just managed to kill my New Year’s. If you come back on Easter, you can burn down my apartment.”

“Hey, come on, Gold,” Belle protested and he was frustrated to hear tears in her voice.

“What do you want from me, Belle?” he demanded as he stalked back over to her.

She tossed her arms out at her side and stomped her foot. “I want you not to be...unhappy.”

“And what are you, the happiness guru, Belle? Are you happy?”

This lit Belle’s fuse. Her eyes snapped into focus and the tears disappeared from her voice. “What do you know about me?” she demanded.

“You aren’t being honest with your family or yourself about what you want,” he said without holding back. “You’ve put everything on hold even though they’ve never asked you and you blame your sister for not getting stuck in the rut with you!”

It was too far and he knew it, but there was no taking it back now.

“What do you know about my family?” Belle shot back. “Spending a week with them doesn’t make you an expert.”

“Yea, well, spending a lifetime with them hasn’t made you one either.’

“Yeah, well I know that keeping your family happy gets complicated,” Belle said. “Would your son be happy knowing you’re sitting in a token booth, wasting away?”

Her jab hit home. Gold deflated. “No,” he said softly. “He wouldn’t. You’re right. But you have no idea what’s it like to be alone.”

How could she? She had a twin sister and a family that loved her.

Belle seemed to think he had someone too. “Hey,” she whispered. “You have Lacey.”

He pulled away. “I don’t have anybody.”

In the distance, there was an eruption of noise and then from everywhere, the sounds of Happy New Year came crashing down around the two of them on the sidewalk. “Good night, Belle,” he said and while the sounds of Auld Lang Syne drifted from the courtyard, Gold disappeared inside.

It was only when he was safely inside, and leaning against the heavy door did he add,” Happy New Year.”

\--

At Northwestern Memorial, the staff lifted their own non-alcoholic cup of cheer to the ceiling, as they too joined in singing the traditional song of New Year’s Eve. In the room across the hall, Lacey French’s heart monitor beeped softly as she was lost in her own dreams.

But all dreams come to an end.

Eyelashes fluttered, and then bright blue eyes stared up at the ceiling. For a moment, she laid still, before the music drew her attention. She slowly turned her head to gaze at the festivities outside her own door and for a moment there was only confusion as she tried to understand where she was, what was happening-

As the song grew clear, Lacey’s heart monitor grew louder and louder still as realization dawned. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LACEY'S AWAKE. I think it was mainly due to OfPrincesandSavages nudging her with a medically approved stick. 
> 
> Next chapter, we get to know Lacey better, Jefferson does some fast talking, and Belle gets honest. 
> 
> Also, in case my previous thanks was not enough, I have outlined the rest of this story so we have an end in sight!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another round of heartfelt thank yous to everyone who has reviewed. I know I've been rubbish at responding but every review has been treasured and saved in my inbox and I go back to read over them when I need the motivation to write. As you can see, I was highly motivated as here's a brand new chapter!

Two A.M. on New Year’s morning, Gold barrelled through the hallways of Northwest Memorial, hardly heeding the protests of the people on the street. He nearly knocked someone over as he turned the corner into the hospital so sharply he may as well have gone straight through the wall.

The call had caught Gold just as he had fallen asleep, and he had been groggy when he fumbled for the receiver on the wall. He only heard the words ‘Northwest Memorial’, ‘Lacey French’, and ‘unexpected development’ before he had dropped the phone.

Unexpected development had been what they had said shortly before Neal had been admitted full time. An unexpected development is a term they had used when they had suggested hospice and unexpected development was the thing Nurse Tinker had whispered when she had held his hand after the doctor had announced the time of death.

David stood in the lobby, facing away from the front door towards the wall of elevators. “David!” Gold gasped, the stitch in his side making it hard to breathe. “They called me and told me to get down here. What happened?”

Gold had anticipated some of the worst-case scenarios on his way to the hospital, so he was taken aback by David’s wide grin. “She’s awake!” he announced as he grabbed Gold’s arm and dragged him towards the elevator.

“Oh, that-” Gold stammered as he was propelled forward. This was bad. This was very, very bad, he needed to get out. As the elevator doors swung open, he pointed behind him as if he had forgotten something, but David pushed him forward. Overhead, the hospital paged the Byers family to meet in the solarium.

“Boy, will she be glad to see you,” David said, relief evident on his face as the elevator ticked upwards. “I was waiting for Belle, but apparently there’s been some kind of hold up on the interstate, so let’s go on up.”

“Yeah,” Gold murmured as a sweat broke out across his forehead. In a minute, he was going to be revealed as a fraud, a liar, and very possibly a pervert. At least Belle wouldn’t be witness to it.

  
\--

By the time the two men arrived at Lacey’s room, Doctor Whale had the rest of the family gathered just outside. When he saw them, he nodded in perfunctory greeting. Gold surveyed the floor for Nurse Tinker but did not see her amongst the staff.

Emma stood closest to the door, unaware of the doctor, her family or Gold’s arrival as she gazed at her godmother. Jefferson had a hat clutched so tightly in his hands that the brim had already started to tear and Mary Margaret was inches away from the doctor’s face with a litany of questions.

“Now, now,” the doctor said as he held his hands up for their full attention. It took Emma a moment to pull her gaze from the open door, and Whale waited until he had all eyes on him. “As I mentioned, Lacey woke last night at midnight, a bit earlier than we had anticipated, and was a bit disoriented. We did some tests, and everything came back excellent.”

“Can we see her?” Mary Margaret asked, effectively cutting off whatever the doctor would have shared with them about the results of said tests. Gold was in the process of looking for the nearest exit, but David had a firm grip on his shoulder. Jefferson couldn’t even look at him.

Realizing his time basking in their appreciation was not going to happen until they saw Lacey, Doctor Whale sighed and motioned for them to follow him into the room. Lacey lay upon the bed, as still as she had been the other day, and Gold let himself be pushed into the room by the family, though he hung at the back of the huddle around the bed, eyeing the exit sign across the hospital floor.

Doctor Whale bent down to place his hand gently on her shoulder. “Lacey?” Doctor Whale murmured, careful not to startle her. “Lacey. Your family is here, Lacey.”

The woman on the bed gave a sleepy sigh, and then as if kissed awake by a prince, her blue eyes fluttered open. Her gaze went first to David, who flashed her a thumbs up with a tight-lipped grin as he swallowed an exclamation of delight, before she turned to where Mary Margaret was clutching her husband’s arm, tears pouring out of her eyes as she smiled so broadly it looked as if she was in pain. Mary Margaret waved her fingers at her friend as her bottom lip trembled violently.

Emma peered down at her godmother, curious and yet uncertain of how to react. She twisted her medical bracelet nervously while Jefferson stood beside her, face stoic though his hat was clutched so tightly in his hand that it no longer resembled anything more than a piece of fabric.

Lacey’s eyes moved over the group, searching for her sister when her eyes landed on him. “Wh-who are you?” she asked. There was no accusation in her tone, just a simple curiosity.

It took a moment for this question to sink in, and when it did, everyone turned towards him except Jefferson, who slowly raised his hand to his face. It was over. Gold froze, his mouth opening and closing, but nothing came forth. How did he explain to them all he had only done it to try and help-

“My god,” David murmured, and Gold tried to prepare himself for what came next. “She’s got amnesia.”

Lacey gave a little giggle as if this was the funniest thing she had ever heard, and then her head slumped back upon the pillow and her eyes slid shut once more.

\--

In the waiting room, there were a million questions flying at once. The family stood in a knot around the doctor, all striving to be heard as Gold leaned against the doorway, his jaw so tight he could have bitten through steel.

“Lacunar amnesia is a condition in which memory loss...is localized and patchy, limited to isolated events,” Doctor Whale was telling them. If Gold hadn’t believed the man to be a hack before, he certainly did now.

“Selective amnesia?” Mary Margaret drawled out in disbelief, and she didn’t even know the truth.

“Okay. Exactly,” Doctor Whale said, clearly used to this reaction in this diagnosis.

Gold couldn’t take it. He had kept silent for too long, and Lacey was awake now, the charade was over. “Um, sorry,” he interrupted and the crowd turned to him. “You--I-I need to tell you something that is really important.” Jefferson shook his head violently, but Gold ignored him. “I was never-’

“Dying?” Emma interrupted miserably.

Gold lost the stream of consciousness. “Huh?”

“We know,’ Mary Margaret said as she put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Belle called us after you all spoke.”

“I’m sorry,” Emma murmured. “Lily just said she had heard that...and I...I-” The teen shook her head and just shook her medical emergency bracelet at him as if that would help explain it.

Before anyone could respond to this, the elevator door chimed and a familiar face rushed out. “Belle!” Jefferson called out as she nearly went right past them.

“Hey,” Belle said as her eyes flickered over Gold. She walked right by him, and he had to swallow the disappointment in this cold greeting to join nausea already rolling in his stomach. “So, she came out of it, huh?”

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” Mary Margaret said as she clutched her friend’s arms.

An orderly popped into the room. “Excuse me. Doctor? She’s up again.”

“All right, let’s go,” David declared as he led the way out of the room. He began to explain the situation to Belle.

Gold lingered where he stood, his attempt to come clean interrupted once more. “Jefferson!” he hissed as he moved forward just in time to catch the younger man’s elbow.

Jefferson, caught in his escape, held up both hands in reassurance. “Now, listen,” he said with a nod. “Let me handle it. I’m too old a friend for them to kill.” Gold clenched his hands into fists at his side, and Jefferson patted his shoulder awkwardly. “I’ll take care of it, all right?”

Gold forced himself to exhale through his nose, though hardly any of the tension left his body. “Okay,” he agreed.

“And I’ll do it right now,” Jefferson promised.

“Okay.”

“Come on. Let’s go,” Jefferson said as he escorted him out the door. “Right behind you.”

Emboldened by knowing this whole fiasco was almost over, Gold went to join the rest of the group. So, caught up in his own thoughts, he didn’t even notice Jefferson had gone left instead of right and had effectively disappeared. Gold tumbled into the room just in time to hear Mary Margaret ask, “How are you feeling, beautiful?”

“I don’t know,” Lacey replied with a shake of her head. It was an odd experience to stand in the room with both the French twins awake, though only he and Whale seemed taken aback by the experience.

“Hey!” Belle said, a little too loudly when she noticed Gold had joined them. “You remember him?” she asked her sister.

Lacey turned to look past Doctor Whale at where Gold stood in the doorway. He smiled tightly back down at her. Lacey turned back to her twin with a pleasant, but uncertain, smile. “Should I?”

“Look closely,” David suggested with a wink.

Lacey’s eyes widened at this tone, and without moving her head glanced back over at Gold. She was lost, utterly adrift, and Gold felt like the biggest bastard that had ever dared to breathe. He swallowed, and closed his eyes, fighting the urge to be sick. Where was Jefferson?

“He looks a little familiar,” Lacey attempted, trying to give the crowd what they wanted. She ruined this by following up with, “Why?”

“I think it’s coming back,” Emma whispered up to Belle.

“I think so,” Mary Margaret said with a happy sigh. They were all so desperate they were seeing hope where it did not exist.

“What’s coming back?” Lacey asked, her eyes alert and wary. “Tell me. Tell me.” She struggled to sit upright. “What’s coming back?”

“You have amnesia,” Mary Margaret announced in a voice so forcefully cheerful, she may have been telling someone that yes, they won the lottery but they were also going to die the next day. Whale shot her a dark look that she had stolen his thunder, but Mary Margaret ignored him.

“I...do?” Lacey repeated as she looked down at her hands to see if those were still her own.

“Lacey, you’re engaged,” Emma said as if talking to a very small child. Beside her, Belle had her head lowered, not quite making eye contact with anyone else in the room.

“To who?” Lacey asked, clearly taken aback by this entire return to reality.

“To Gold,” David said as if this the most obvious thing in the world.

“Gold?” Lacey repeated with a blink. “Who’s Gold?”

Gold sighed and turned as if to go, but Emma hurried over to grab his hand and draw him closer to the bed.

“You don’t remember, do you?” Mary Margaret simpered as she brushed the hair out of her friend’s face.

An orderly appeared at the door. “Excuse me,” he announced with a smile at the happy family gathered around the sleeping beauty’s bed. “Got some Jell-O for you today,” he announced as he put the tray by the bed.

Lacey looked panicked as she racked her brain. “Do I like Jell-O?” she asked.

“Yum!” Mary Margaret mimed with a wink.

Emma rolled her eyes. “She’s always like this when she gets scared,” she confided to Gold in a stage whisper. “She reverts to treating you like you’re five.”

“I think she’s had enough excitement for one day,” Whale announced at the head of the bed as he regarded the machines. “She’s still a little disoriented and needs sleep. Let’s all go home,” he suggested.

“All she’s been doing is sleep,” Belle protested but she let the others lead her out of the room. They all said their goodbyes as they staggered past Gold out into the hall.

“She looks so good!” Mary Margaret whispered to Gold as she passed by him.

“She’s going to be fine,” David told him.

“I think she looks wonderful,” Emma said as she released his hand. Out of the corner of his eye, Gold saw Jefferson's face briefly appear in the swinging door windows down the hall, so he hung behind.

“All right, we’ll be back,” Belle called to her sister who had already turned her attention to the orderly at her bedside.

Gold did not notice Belle had stopped beside him until Whale exited the room to find her still lingering. “Come on, Belle, you too,” he said as if he was the friendly family physician. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

Assuming the coast was clear, Jefferson exited the nearest doors and headed straight towards the elevator but Gold caught him. “Jefferson,” he growled as he grabbed the young man and spun him away from the elevators. “Where have you been?”

“What?” he asked innocently. “I’m not allowed to go to the bathroom?”

“Jefferson.”

“I’m handling it!” he assured Gold. “I will tell them.”

“When?” Gold demanded. “When? On my golden anniversary?”

“Gold! I’ll tell them!” Jefferson promised.

“You better tell them!”

“I said I’d tell them!”

Gold wasn’t so sure, but he sighed and nodded for Jefferson to leave the way.

Back in her bed, Lacey stared up at the ceiling with a puzzled look on her face. She slowly began to sing the alphabet, nodding along to herself as the familiar rhyme came back to her.

The orderly smiled at her with a wink. “Lovely singing voice,” he said encouragingly. Lacey could only smile brittly back at him, unsure if she had at some point learned this man’s name, only to forget it, and too scared to ask.

\--

Belle lingered in the lobby as the Nolans headed home. She had been up for twenty-four hours at this point, looked like hell warmed over, and wanted nothing more than to climb into her sister’s bed and hold her like they had done as children.

She didn’t know what she was waiting for until the elevator slid open to reveal Jefferson and Gold deep in conversation. “Hey!” she called out as she went to meet them. Gold looked surprised to see her, and both men stopped speaking abruptly as if she had caught them red-handed. She looked back and forth between the two of them. “What are you guys talking about?”

“We were going to split a cab,” Jefferson told her as he donned his cap. It was twisted beyond recognition and fell over his brow. “I was just saying it would be easier for me to take the El-”

The words were out of her mouth before she thought of them.“I’ll drive you. I have Lacey’s car.”

Jefferson nodded. “Lead the way.”

\--

They dropped Jefferson off at the red line after he assured them it would take him five minutes on the EL versus thirty minutes via the car thanks to the roadblocks around town for the holidays.

This left Gold in the passenger seat and Belle’s knuckles white against the steering wheel. She had no idea what to say to her brother-in-law, and the only words that seemed to want to come out of her mouth were something one did not say out loud to their sister’s fiance. Besides, he was probably still mad over the whole mess that had been their last conversation. She didn’t blame him if he didn’t want to speak to her ever again.

Her eyes focused on the road, Belle did not notice Gold was struggling to articulate something either, and the drive stretched on in a pregnant silence.

The streets were empty, except for the lone cop car sectioning off an intersection. The radio was playing classical music softly in the silence of the car. It felt like an eternity before Belle turned on the growingly familiar street where Storybrooke Apartment sat.

She pulled to the curb and parked the car. Gold did not take his seatbelt off for a moment, staring out into the courtyard now empty of party-goers. Belle tried to find the words, but it was Gold who broke the silence. “Belle, you’ve been...really great this week.”

“Yeah,” Belle scoffed. “Like, uh, when I accused you of lying to everybody. Or when I accused you of having a relationship with Selena.” She paused and then added with a self-deprecating groan, “ Or when I thought you were dying and announced it to an entire party.”

She couldn’t even bear to look at him, so his chuckle was a surprise. “You’ve had a really busy week this week, haven’t you?”

Belle groaned and lowered her face to the steering wheel. She was going about this the wrong way- she needed to tell him-

“Look, Belle, I um-” Gold exhaled slowly. “Starting tomorrow, uh, things...are probably going to be kind of different.”

Like her twin sister was going to remember she was engaged to this amazingly kind, funny, wonderful, sexy man and Belle would have to learn how to stop having heart palpitations every time he looked at her with that smile. “Yeah,” she managed.

“I just wanted you to know that you’ve become..uh,... Belle stopped breathing. “A really good friend.”

She released the breath she had been holding and chuckled. “Yeah, okay.” Her chest felt empty as if everything inside of her had disappeared with those three words. Real good friend. She tapped the steering wheel as she processed.

Gold nodded. “Okay,” he announced before he opened the car door.

“Good friend,” Belle repeated and hearing herself repeat it out loud did the trick. “Truman!” she called out and the use of his first name stopped him on the sidewalk.

He leaned down to the window with a quizzical look, and everything in Belle wanted nothing more than to lean over the seat and press her lips against his, good friends be damned. “Yeah?” he breathed.

Belle was about to tell him this whole week had been a whirlwind, and how at every turn he had been there, how she had wanted him there, how she couldn’t even consider a world where he wasn’t there….but Lacey’s face came to her and instead she found herself looking down.

“I didn’t mean, uh, what I said about you and Lacey,” she told him and she forced herself to smile. “I think...you two are gonna make a really terrific couple, and uh….” she looked up into his eyes. “I’m really glad you won’t be alone anymore.”

Gold’s simply nodded. “Good-bye,” he told her.

“Bye,” Belle mumbled and then, uncertain she could prevent the tears that were starting to fall, she nodded and gave a little half wave before she drove away. She left him standing there upon the corner, and if she had looked back, she might have seen him watching her drive away into the night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know a lot of you all haven't seen the movie in ages (it's on Netflix PS!) but raise your hand if you ever felt bad for Peter when he woke up and is utterly confused about what's happening! This story has been challenging to take a rom-com such as WYWS which is a classic but also a little problematic (especially when you gender switch- B what were you thinking!) as I explore how everyone feels.
> 
> I do want to shout out beastlycheese for calling out how triggering it must have been for Emma to hear Gold was dying. Definitely going to explore that more in the next chapter. (In the movie Lucy (Gold's character) is assumed to be pregnant but that didn't work here)- but I didn't take a close enough look at how that would impact Emma in the last chapter. With everything going on, it's been hard for all of us to remember Emme'a struggling with her own life-threatening disease. 
> 
> Next Chapter also has Lacey struggling with her diagnosis of amnesia (selective or otherwise), Jefferson 'handling' it, and Belle and Lacey getting some overdue quality time together.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter to let me know you all were hanging in there!

The idea of going home to empty rooms was so abhorrent, Belle ended up driving around for a bit before she came to the inevitable conclusion she wanted to be around the people she loved. Knowing the doctor had left instructions for Lacey to remain undisturbed until later this afternoon at the earliest, Belle went to the only other home she knew.

Her arrival at the Nolans’ household was heralded by excited snuffing at the door. She cracked the door open for Sheriff to wiggle out of the crack. He immediately started jumping in the vain hope of getting the box of doughnuts in her hand. “Easy, lover,” Belle laughed as the dog changed his tactic to furiously licking her free hand.   
  
Barely an hour after sunrise, Belle was surprised to find the entire house was not asleep. Emma’s voice called out from the kitchen, “Belle, is that you?”

“Hey, kiddo,” Belle greeted as Emma came out to the hall to meet her. “Brought you some doughnuts.”

Emma clasped her hands together in thanks. “You’re a lifesaver,” she said as she liberated the box from Belle’s hands. “Mom’s got me eating these fat-free bran muffins. They taste like plywood, even Sheriff doesn’t like them.”

Belle bent down to scoop Sheriff in her arms. The terrier thanked her by licking enthusiastically at her face before snuggling his snout into the side of her neck and sighing happily. In the few days at the Nolan household, the terrier seemed much happier and engaged than the quiet dog they had found in Lacey’s apartment. He was a few pounds heavier too.

Emma had her school books scattered across the dining room table. She began to clean out a spot by shoving everything to the far side. “Getting some work done, I see,” Belle said as she sat down.

“Might as well,” Emma said with a roll of her eyes. “Mom and Dad went back to sleep Didn’t want to risk waking them up by turning on the TV. I’ll probably call Lilly to see if she wants to get lunch later.”

Belle went to help Emma slide things to the side, only to uncover a small book hidden amongst the stack of texts. “What is Dying Young?”

Emma grabbed it away; her medical bracelet jingling in the otherwise silent house. The teen couldn’t quite meet her eye as Sheriff, sensing the change in the room, hopped down onto the floor with a whine. “I...It’s nothing.”

“Talk to me,” Belle said with a gentle nudge of her foot against’ Emma’s legs. Sheriff has gone straight over to Emma and hopped into her lap. Emma’s arms locked around him at once and she buried her face into the short hair of his neck.

Belle pushed the box of doughnuts toward the two. “It’s been a hell of a week, hasn’t it?”

Emma snorted but lifted her head to take a powdered doughnut. “Life is a pain in the ass. You know? One minute the worst thing you’re worried about if your best friend is mad at you, or if you’re going to make the softball team, and the next, you’re told you’re heart is full of holes and you probably won’t see graduation.”

Belle had heard variations of this speech over the years, and she knew to stay silent. Mary Margaret and David filled these awkward silences with hope and prayers, encouragement and fighting words, and Jefferson simply made jokes. Lacey hadn’t been able to handle these moments of uncertainty and had taken the soonest opportunity to flee the scene entirely. Belle had learned if she just remained silent, and let Emma talk her way through the silences on her own.

“Lacey almost died,’ Emma said quietly into the silence. “She almost died, and ...and I wouldn’t have gotten to tell her I was sorry.”

Belle shook her head. “Sorry?” she repeated. “Why would you have to tell Lacey sorry?”

Emma shrugged, but there were tears in her eyes. “It’s my fault she’s not...if I wasn’t sick, she wouldn’t have left.”

Belle had to resist the urge to reach out and grab Emma into a hug. “Emma, honey,” she murmured. “Lacey leaving wasn’t your fault.”

Emma snorted. “I’m not blind. She and Mom started to fight after my diagnosis came. Then, she stopped coming around. You flinch everytime you accidentally say her name around me and, Jefferson just laughs it off every time I ask how she is. Sure, she calls sometimes...but she’s not really here, you know?”

“That’s -It’s not okay...but you know, our mom had cancer,” Belle reminded her gently. “It was hard on Lacey. She doesn’t...handle... illness very well.”

“I noticed,” Emma snorted before she grew serious once more. “Which is...which is why when I heard Gold was…”

“Dying?” Belle asked with a gentle kick under the table.

“Ugh,” Emma groaned. “Yea. I just accepted it, you know? Because I wanted it to be true that Lacey...that it wasn’t me-” Emma sighed and fed Sheriff the rest of the doughnut. “I just thought maybe I had been wrong, and that she had been distant because she had been with Truman...and helping him...and if he was dying too...maybe she was learning how to help us both.”

It was not really her place to tell Emma, but under the circumstances, Belle didn’t think Gold would mind. “Did you know Gold had a son?”

Emma’s head popped up. “What?”

Belle nodded. “His name was Neal. He had a heart defect...died a few years ago.”

Emma inhaled sharply. Sheriff whined and licked her chin as she clutched at his fur. “Why...didn’t he say anything?”

Belle shook her head. “He doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“Oh, my God,” Emma murmured and she squeezed her eyes shut. “He never told me- he-”

“Went through a lot,” Belle said as she reached out to take Emma’s hand across the table. “He’s gone through a lot, and I think...I think it’s fate he came into our family because he needed us.”

“What if-what happens when I-”

“No,” Belle said sternly, anticipating the question. “All your results have been great this past year, and you're close to the top of the waitlist-”

“Belle,” Emma interrupted, never comfortable with this particular topic. “There’s a lot of things that could go wrong with transplants. Before, during or after-”

“All I’m saying is to have some hope. Lacey loves you. We all love you, including Gold.” Emma protested in the flustered teenage way that meant Belle had hit close to home. Belle winked at her. “He’s always making sure you’re okay and checking up on you. I think you remind him of Neal.”

“Oh geez, thanks,” Emma groaned and flicked some powdered sugar across the table at her.

They broke out into delighted laughter, just as Mary Margaret entered the room with her hair askew and yawning. “Belle?” she said through a haze of sleep. “What are you doing here?”

“Making breakfast,” Belle decided as she pulled out a chair for her friend. “Breakfast and then we’re watching crappy tv until lunch.”

\--

Stuck in the godforsaken hospital bed, Lacey was spoiling for a fight. She crossed her arms and glared up at everyone crowded around her. “Twenty-two, ten, forty,” she rattled off. “Eighth-grade locker combination. Birthdate: July 26, 1964.”

“You have to remember Gold,” Emma protested from her seat on the bed.

Lacey ignored her. “Social Security Number,” Lacey continued stubbornly. “144-60-6894.”

Mary Margaret looked over to David to a frown and their little silent exchange annoyed Lacey even more. “You love him,” Mary Margaret told her as if this was a well-known fact. “You just...don’t remember him.”

That was exactly the problem. Lacey did not remember him. She didn’t remember one single thing about him. And no matter how much the nurses explained it to her, Lacey wasn’t buying it. She took a break from trying to convince the rest of them to fish her cup from the bedside table. Her voice was still raspy from lack of use, and her mouth was always dry from the medicine.

Jefferson entered the room, sweeping his hat off, as he entered into the debate. Lacey raised her voice and she returned to her mission. “Three-point-seven-three grade point average, Northwestern University,” she rattled off with a sip from her straw.

“Can I talk to Lacey alone?” Jefferson interrupted.

“Everything okay, Jefferson?” David asked from his seat on the couch.

“Senior Class President, 1981,” Lacey said to herself.

Jefferson shot her a pointed look and Lacey quieted down, hoping someone was finally going to give her some answers. Jefferson had gone through what some people could only dream of; he of all people would understand what it was like to wake up with your world turned upside down.

“I just wanna talk to my best friend,” Jefferson said with a shrug.

“Let me take that for you,” Mary Margaret said as Lacey started to slurp a now empty cup without realizing it.

“Thanks, M&M,” Lacey said. “You mind grabbing me some more ice chips?”

“Of course. We’ll be back in a bit,” Mary Margaret assured her as she pushed her husband and daughter out of the room. “ Belle should be back with lunch any minute.”

Thank God, Lacey said as she wiggled her fingers at the retreating Nolan’s backs. No wonder so many people died in a hospital, who could stomach this cafeteria food three times a day?   
When the room had cleared, Jefferson sat down at the foot of the bed. Lacey raised a brow at him in conspiracy, but Jefferson remained uncharacteristically sober. “Lacey, I’ve known you a long time. I’ve been to every major event in your life,” Jefferson continued. “From rush to graduation to every twenty-fifth birthday you’ve had- all seven of them. You’re smart. You’re very popular with all those society friends of yours. You make a nice living, and everyone knows you’re beautiful- but Lacey, you’re an asshole.”

On the high of these compliments, this caught her unaware. Lacey’s jaw dropped as she stared back at her best friend in shock. “Excuse me?”

“Now, look as your best friend, I mean, I love ya. I couldn’t love ya more if you were my own twin. But the fact of the matter is you’re…” Jefferson threw his hands up. “Well, you’re an asshole.”

Jefferson had never...in their entire friendship...ever spoken to her like this. He was the one she could tell everything, from her affair with the married congressman to when she had accepted her current condo as a bribe from the vice-president of a competing company. Jefferson always laughed or added a cutting quip about the idiocy of others, but he had never directed it at her before…

“Is there a point to this?” Lacey demanded. “If I wanted a speech, I’d call Mary Margaret.”

“Gold,” Jefferson answered. “Lacey, there’s something...you have to know about him.” He sighed, clearly struggling with something, but Lacey was still focusing on the whole asshole revelation to pay much attention. “You see, he-well-uh-he...you know…”

“Jefferson!” Lacey protested as her patience snapped. “Spit it out!”

“He’s not only your fiance, he’s your guardian angel!” Jefferson finished in a rush. Lacey blinked and glanced down at the ring currently on her finger. “Yeah!” Jefferson said as he found his train of thought. “Lacey, he saved your life!”

Lacey couldn’t argue this. Plenty of the hospital staff had told her the story and had brought the newspaper clippings in for her to read. There was no doubt that Truman Gold had saved her life...but she didn’t remember going to the station to see him...she didn’t know him- she had gone out for Christmas Eves drinks, had a little fun with the bartender, and only on her way home had she remembered she needed to get the dog some food-

She didn’t remember anything else from that morning, but that Doctor...Whale or something...had told her that was common in traumatic experiences.

“Now,” Jefferson said and Lacey returned her attention to him. “He’s coming to see you today, and I want you to yourself a favor. I want you to look deeply into his eyes and listen with the heart of a woman….who has just been given a second chance at life.’

‘And if after two minutes, if you’re not madly in love with him, why, tell him you wanna break up, and you can go back to being alone.”

Lacey went to protest, to remind Jefferson she was no alone, but he didn’t give her the chance. “But in the two minutes you see what the rest of us only took seconds to see, you will accept his proposal for the second time...and marry him before he has a chance to escape.”

Truman Gold had seemed like a regular kind of man. Older, distinguished, with sad eyes and a faint Scottish accent that to be honest, Lacey did not find unappealing. He had seemed...nice if one liked those kinds of men, but he was not someone Lacey would have gone out for drinks with… much less agreed to marry.

Jefferson stood. “Uh, before he comes, take a little time and think about...what this asshole just told you. All right?”

Lacey nodded slowly and to her relief, Jefferson reached down to press a kiss to her forehead. “You know, if I wasn’t such a mess, I’d marry him myself,” he said with a wink. “That is if he liked beards.”

Lacey laughed and waved him away, but her mind was on the oddity that was Truman Gold. Jefferson murmured his goodbyes, and he would be back later before he left her to wait for everyone to return with lunch.

It left her some time to think. She had woken in a strange world where everyone...had seemed to forget they were not on speaking terms. Mary Margaret and David acted as if she had never stopped calling them back. Belle seemed to think nothing was amiss, as if they were still as close as they had been as girls and even Emma… Emma acted as if Lacey had not abandoned her entirely.

This room had no windows to the outside world, and the remote was too far away from her to reach without help. She didn’t bother to press the call button but leaned her head back against the pillows to think about what Jefferson had said.

Lacey supposed...she had been rather selfish lately. There had been that thing with that one guy...and then that thing she had done at the bar...and yes, that was another thing was illegal technically but she had never...gotten caught so...who was it hurting?

She did not know this world she had woken up in, but she...didn’t hate it. Her family was here as if she had never burned those bridge, and there was a man with kind eyes who apparently loved her and had saved her life. Very different than the other men in her life. She looked back down at the ring on her finger and made a decision.

She’d be the Lacey French, they all seemed to think she was.

It couldn’t be that hard, could it?

\--

This was….very possibly the last place Gold wanted to be at the moment. Jefferson had called him earlier to assure him he had handled things, and that all Gold needed to do was come to the hospital that afternoon to drop off Lacey’s things.

Juggling the cardboard box, Gold entered the hospital room to find Lacey alert and awake. He stumbled to a stop, not expecting to find her alone but before he could retreat, she struggled to sit upright and called out, “Truman!”

The warm welcome paused him in his tracks. “Hi,” he replied uncertainly, wavering there in the doorway with a box in his arms.

“Hi,” Lacey repeated with a broad smile. Her eyes were just as warm as he remembered, but there was also something magnetic behind them that demanded his attention. She gestured for him to come in closer.

Um,” he mumbled before holding the box up. “I came to bring you back your things.”

Lacey reached over to the bedside table to grab a plate of sandwiches. “Would you like one?” she offered.

Gold shook his head. “No, no. I’m...okay.” He lowered the box to the ground. “Thanks,” he added a side note. “Can I get you anything?”

Lacey sighed and plucked at her hospital gown. “I wish I had my own clothes.”

Gold brightened and fished out the silver dress from the box. “Like this?”

“That’s my favorite!” Belle cried as she took it happily from him. “You think they’d let me wear this in bed?”

Gold chuckled and at Lacey’s patted the chair beside her to indicate he should sit down. “Probably not,” he said with a wave at the wires. “Probably would clash anyways.”

Lacey threw her head back and laughed. Gold lowered himself into the chair beside her. Her eyes did not crinkle in quite the same way Belle’s did though her eyes were still the bright blue he had remembered from Christmas morning. Still, the spell she had cast over him that morning had long ago faded away.

A silence fell between them. Lacey just sat there and smiled at him while Gold smiled awkwardly back at her. Nothing came to mind to spur conversation until he remembered one of the stories the Nolans had told him. “I, I saw a picture of you, uh, when you saved those kids from that junkyard dog.”

“Oh. They never call. They never write,” Lacey said with a shrug and a wink. “That was a long time ago,” she added as an afterthought.

“Yeah, I guess we don’t get to do many heroic things as an adult, huh?” Gold agreed.

“Oh, that's for sure,” Lacey said with a roll of her eyes. Then, she clapped her hands. “Wait! You do though!”

Gold felt his cheeks coloring and wanted to disappear into the floor. “Oh, no,” he protested. “Jumping in front of a train was unusual.”

Lacey didn’t seem to hear him. “I don’t think I’ve ever done anything truly heroic in my whole life,” she said to herself. “I chased a purse-snatcher once.”

“Well, that’s something,” Gold said in support.

“But I pretended to break a heel,” Lacey continued as if she had not heard him.

“Well,” Gold said, fishing about for something to say. “Most people wouldn’t have chased after him in the first place. I mean, I work at the El. Believe me, I know.”

Lacey returned her attention back to him with a soft smile. “You’re sweet,” she said as she traced his face, and Gold had to look away so she wouldn’t see him blushing. “You know, you do remind me of someone,” Lacey said. Gold looked over at her, his heart starting to beat in his chest, but Lacey just laughed. “It’s probably you.”

He forced himself to smile, as the heart monitors beeped softly in the background. He had no idea what was happening, but Lacey French seemed content to sit and talk with him and he might as well stay for a bit until someone else showed up. He didn’t want her to be alone. There was nothing worse than sitting in a hospital room alone.

\--

Keith Nottingham had enough of Chicago. It was dirty. It smelled. It was crowded.

He had been back for a day or so now, and to his annoyance, Lacey French had still not called him back. Granted...they had left things...in an awkward place, but she had enough time to pout over the holidays.

He entered the lobby of Lake Point Tower, whipping off his Ray-Bans as he moved pointedly to the elevators. It was New Year’s Day. The whole city was practically sleeping it off, so Keith had no doubt he’d find Lacey sleeping off her hangover upstairs-

“Uh! Sir?” a doorman came running up to him before he made the elevators. “Excuse me. Excuse me, sir- What apartment?”

Keith smiled, a dangerous sign for those who knew him well. “You’re new,” he told the doorman.

“Uh, yes, sir,” the doorman agreed. “What apartment?”

Keith forced himself to count to five before answering. “I’m going to Lacey French’s apartment.”

“Ah,” the doorman said with a knowing nod. Of course, he knew Lacey. Everyone knew Lacey. “And your name please?”

Keith ground his teeth. “Keith Nottingham. I’m Lacey’s fiance.”

The doorman had the audacity to chuckle. “Ah, you’re not her fiance,” he said with a finger waggle at him as if he was some college boy.

At Keith’s darkening expression, the doorman had the good sense to stop smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: More hospital shenanigans.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops! A lot of "Jefferson!"s last chapter! To be fair, he is completely ignorant of the chemistry between Gold and Belle, as he is too focused on worrying about his best friend being in a coma and he truly wants the best for Lacey, which he believes is a grounding force with a man who needs a family and who fits right in with them- he's just thinking about the wrong twin!

Despite being in remission for nearly a year, Colette French died in her sleep on July 26th. This just also happened to be her twin daughters twelfth birthday. So, when they awoke, there were no good morning birthday kisses nor breakfast in bed. The twins woke to ambulance lights outside their bedroom window and EMTs in the house.

The doctors had explained Colette’s prescribed medicine cocktail had reacted negatively with an unprescribed sleeping pill. Belle had nodded along while Lacey had stayed outside in the waiting room. Their father did not bother to take them home from the hospital but the trio all went straight to the nearest bar. The twins ate greasy burgers while their father did his best to drink through the bar’s supply of whiskey. When he learned it was their birthday, the bartender slipped them both a small taste of his best wine before he called them a cab. Moe French had never mentioned his daughters’ birthday again as long as he lived.

Lacey decided life was short. She grew outgoing and popular, filling the abyss of grief with accolades and success. Lacey was always on the move, always one step ahead and always center of attention. She learned you caught more flies with honey than vinegar, and if her smile soured when no one was looking, only her twin noticed. For Belle, it was a lesson on being prepared for the worst. She kept her head down and focused on making sure the bills were paid, that there were groceries at home, and Moe was not passed out on the sidewalk.

Lacey became the star, shining bright; Belle made sure the power bill was paid.

When Lacey received a full academic scholarship at Northwestern, Belle applied there too. They, of course, ended up rooming together. They made friends together, becoming a family of sorts with their college best friends, and even graduated together. It was only when they entered the real world when the French twins start to realize they could, in fact, survive on their own. Lacey embraced this wholeheartedly, while Belle learned that change was inevitable but copeable.

When the call had come to Christmas Morning, the words “Lacey”, “Accident”, and “Coma” had blurred together. Those three words had been on repeat in Belle’s brain the whole way back to Chicago. The trip itself was a blur, the vacation before it a dream that Belle could not quite remember no matter how she tried.

Belle had come to accept life without her twin sister at her side. They still spoke. They still lived in the same city. It wasn’t until Lacey had almost died that Belle had seen the chasm between them. Everyone knew Lacey dated, that she had a new job every couple of months, that she jumped from interest to interest like she was trying lifestyles on as one would a pair of jeans. Belle had thought she knew her sister, that this was a phrase, that she needed space. She had never been jealous of her sister or wanted anything that she had. Then, Belle had looked into Truman Gold’s eyes and realized she didn’t know her sister or herself at all.

Belle had dated. She had lived her life. She had no regrets. She had always been there for the people who needed her, and she had always done what needed to be done. Her loved ones came first, but Belle had never bothered to consider if that's what she really wanted.

Lost in these thoughts, Belle nearly walked right past her sister’s room. She course corrected, only to find Lacey in the process of climbing out of the bed and into a wheelchair. “Hey!” Belle exclaimed. “Looking good!”

Lacey had a dark blue robe on, one that looked suspiciously like a luxury hotel robe despite the hospital surroundings. Lacey had even pulled her hair up into her signature french braid and applied a touch of lipstick and mascara.

Always one to bask in the spotlight, Lacey beamed up at her from the wheelchair. “Yeah, well,” she said with a coy smile up at the orderly behind her. “They’re moving me out of the ICU down to the second floor.”

“That’s great, Lace,” Belle said. She indicated the handlebars of the wheelchair. “Mind if I drove?” she asked the orderly.

“Uh,” he said as looked back and forth between the two identical sisters.“No problem. See you at the elevators.”

“All right,” Belle said and took the reins before he could change his mind. There were a few things that Belle needed to get off her chest, and if this one on one time gave her a moment to say it, Belle wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Okay…”

Lacey leaned back in the chair and got comfortable. Her eyes flicked closed, but at this angle, Belle could see the faint outline of the cut on Lacey’s temple where she had fallen onto the tracks. “There we go,” Belle said as she carefully maneuvered them out of the room.

The orderly stopped to check some paperwork, so Belle reasoned she had five minutes or so before he started to look for them at the elevators. A passing doctor nearly walked right into a corner as they passed. Belle sighed pointedly, and Lacey quickly crossed her legs. “Oh. Uh,” Lacey said with a wry chuckle as she rearranged her robe. “It’s a little drafty.”

While the doctor recovered, Belle took the opportunity to fish out what she had smuggled into the hospital. “Here,” she said as she handed Lacey the pint of ice cream. “I brought you some contraband.”

“Oh,” Lacey said as she took the Baskin Robbins with a blissful sigh. An orderly walking past nearly tripped over his own shoelaces at the sound. The Lacey Effect was back in full force. “Chocolate peanut butter. Thanks.” It wasn’t purely altruistic. Belle fished out a spoon from her pocket and Lacey plucked it from her hand. “Hey,” Lacey said as if just remembering something. “Gold’s pretty terrific, isn’t he?”

“Oh, yeah,” Belle said as she struggled to keep her tone as neutral as humanly possible.

“We’re engaged, you know,” Lacey informed her through a mouthful of ice cream.

Belle swallowed. “Yeah, I heard that.”

“Mm,” Lacey mumbled as she slipped the spoon out of her mouth. There were traces of lipstick around the edges as she went for another bite. “Now, this I remember.” They moved slowly down the halls. A few people turned to look after them, but accustomed to this, the twins rolled right by without even noticing. “Everything is better,” Lacey announced as she took a breath from shoveling ice cream into her mouth. “Everything looks better, feels better. Even this chocolate peanut butter tastes better.”

Belle couldn’t help it. “Good,” she mumbled. “It’s fudge mint.”

Lacey checked the label to see it was indeed not chocolate peanut butter but it didn’t seem to matter much. “Whatever,” Lacey declared with a dismissive wave of her spoon. “I’m reborn. If you were a priest right now, I’d confess everything to you.”

“No, no, don’t confess,” Belle said before Lacey could say anything else. Trust Lacey to make everything about her, when Belle was trying to get this off her chest. “I’m trying to be positive right now. Just eat your ice cream.”

Lacey, as usual, ignored her. “I don’t even know what my secretary sent everyone for Christmas.”

“It was a fruit basket. Now, look, I don’t wanna get in-”

“I’ve never been faithful to a man,” Lacey continued as if Belle hadn’t said a word. “Well, maybe I was faithful to Truman, I can’t really remember.”

“I’m gonna leave,” Belle threatened.

It was for naught.

“Remember the junkyard dog?”

Belle squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t even say it.”

“First, I teased it with a bone at the end of its chain.”

Belle stopped short right there in the hall. “Lacey.”

Her sister sighed. “Then, when it got loose and chased me, I went right through that playground. I only saved those kids after I led that dog right to them.”

A nurse brushed past them, prompting Belle to start pushing the wheelchair again. She shivered at the truth of the story Lacey had told since they were thirteen. Doctor Whale had warned that nearly fatal injuries often were accompanied by uncontrollable urges to confess or start over, but Belle wasn’t prepared to handle this at the minute. “Ugh,” Belle groaned. “Did you say any of this to Gold?”

Lacey twisted around in the wheelchair. “That was in the past,” she told her. “I’m making a clean start with Gold. He is- he is...he… “ Lacey trailed off as she tilted her head to the side. “What is he?” she repeated more to herself as struggling to find the missing memories of her life with Truman Gold. “He’s…”

As her sister struggled to articulate what Truman Gold was, Belle’s brain was more than happy to fill in the blanks. “I’d say that he gets under your skin as soon as you meet him,” Belle provided with a shake of her head. “He drives you so nuts you don’t know whether to hug him or just really arm wrestle him.” Belle warmed to this topic of the enigma that was Truman Gold, and a chuckle escaped her. “He would go all the way to Europe for a dream and I don’t know if that amounts to insanity…. or just being really, really likable.”

At that moment, Belle’s heart felt like it was three times too big for her chest and she wanted nothing more than to turn the next corner and see Truman Gold there so she could tell him the same.

“Hmm,” Lacey said with a shake of her head. “No, that’s not it. But he’s gotta be really special. He’s gotta be. And I can spend the rest of my life finding out why. I don’t have to know now. I don’t have to know tomorrow.”

Belle’s fingers tightened like vises on the handles as the elevator came into view. The orderly stood up ahead, and without a word, Belle seamlessly rolled her sister up to him to hand the wheelchair over. With a knot in her throat and tears in her eyes, Belle walked away as her sister rambled on nonchalantly about her future with the most wonderful man in Chicago

“I don’t- I don’t have to- I don’t have to have all the answers today or- Maybe someday, I’ll have a clue but it doesn't mean I can’t make a lifetime commitment.” Lacey continued, unaware her sister was already disappearing down the hall as she was backed into the elevator. ”Does this make any sense?”

“Not really,” the orderly said with a shake of his head, “but that’s common after a head injury.”

\--

The figure standing on the sidewalk of Northwest Memorial puffing on a cigar despite the glares of the people around him was striking, not only for the cloud of smoke hanging around him but for the tall top hat and scarf that was nearly draped to his knees.

Gold was relieved to see him alone. “Jefferson,” he greeted as he joined him just outside the lobby doors. The younger man turned neatly on his heel as if he was going to disappear into the crowded Chicago streets but it was easy enough for Gold to reach out and snag Jefferson’s sleeve.

“Ah!” Jefferson squawked as he twisted around. As his eyes fell on Gold, Jefferson did a neat trick of acting utterly surprised but fooled no one. “Oh, hi.”

Gold released his grip on Jefferson’s sleeve. “What’d they say?” Gold asked, unable to wait a moment longer. He had been on pins and needles all morning, waiting to hear from someone, anyone, on how the truth had been taken. When he hadn’t been able to take it a second loner, he had come down here to face the music.

Jefferson did his best owl impression. “Who?”

Gold considered himself a patient man, but Jefferson’s mad as a hatter act was testing even his limits. “The Nolans. Are-are they inside?” Gold couldn’t quite bring himself to ask how Belle had taken the news, but he glanced into the lobby in case he might see her amongst the crowd.

Jefferson dropped the act. “You missed ‘em.”

“Well, what was their reaction to the news?” Gold pressed. He was ready to rip the band-aid off all at once and deal with the consequences as they fell. He would respect, no, he would understand if the family never wanted to see him again or pressed charges, but not knowing was worse than whatever the truth held in store for him.

“I...didn’t tell them yet,” Jefferson admitted.

Gold could only gape. “What do you mean, Jefferson?” he stammered. “What- what-”

Jefferson held both hands up. “I-”

“What about Lacey?” Surely, Jefferson had told her the truth. She was his best friend and why wouldn’t he explain the situation to her/ Surely she’d understand-

“Well, I didn’t tell her either,” Jefferson confessed.

Gold threw his own hands up and began to pace out there on the sidewalk of Northwest Memorial. “Jefferson, you said you were going to handle this.”

“I’ll handle it!” Jefferson exclaimed.

“This is handling?” Gold demanded.

“This is handling it,” Jefferson said with a nod. “Look, I thought about it and the facts are these- you obviously care about this family and-”

Gold did not bother to let Jefferson finish whatever plot he had in store for his life. “Jefferson?”

“What?”

“You’re fired,” Gold said point blank.

“Fired?’ Jefferson repeated to himself, incredulously.

Gold turned to grab for the door as it swung open, only to bump into a tall, rugged man that had a pair of designer sunglasses over his eyes. “Sorry,” Gold apologized as the other man grunted in wordless acceptance. Gold barely noticed the two of them entered the elevator together. It quickly filled up with other visitors, including a woman with a ficus and a box of tissues.

“Two, please,” the man said curtly to the man beside the buttons.

“Four, please,” Gold mumbled as he mentally prepared himself for what he was going to say. Something along the lines of I’m glad you are doing better, sorry to have lied to your family and made you think you were amnesiac, I was only trying to help and also I may be in love with your twin sister.

\--

“Dr. Biloxi. Dr. Biloxi to I.C.U. North,” the intercom sang as Lacey got accustomed to her new shared quarters. Her roommate was named Ruby, a young woman with a nasty barking cough. The nurse was just about finished setting up her IV drip when the intercom repeated, “Dr. Biloxi. Dr. Biloxi to I.C.U. North.”

At this point, Lacey had a collection of needle marks from the various tests done while she was unconscious. She watched the nurse work with interest as her gloved hands moved carefully down her forearm to check her pulse.

When the door banged open, a familiar face strode into the room. “Keith!” Lacey greeted, utterly delighted by this unexpected appearance.

It was not reciprocated. “You!” Keith spat back. “You’re engaged? May I remind you that you accepted my proposal?”

Lacey blinked at him. She supposed just because she didn’t remember she was engaged didn’t mean others hadn’t had some time to learn of the joyous news. Even ex-boyfriends who she hadn’t heard from in a couple of months. “You said you needed space,” Lacey reminded him with added air quotes. “We broke up.”

“No,” Keith drawled as he approached the bed. “No, I was confused. We stepped back.”

Lacey cocked her head up at him. “You moved to Portugal.”

Keith’s mouth opened and closed as he sought in vain to supply a fitting comeback from the air around him. “Yes, well,” he said. “Well, I didn’t think you were going….to run off out and marry the first money bags that you came across.”

Lacey couldn’t help but grin at a flustered Keith Nottingham. “Gold is not a money bags.”

“Gold?” Keith repeated in disbelief. “Gold who?”

Lacey shrugged. “I don’t remember,” she said in all honesty.

“Liar!” Keith spat.

“I don’t remember him proposing,” Lacey told him as she turned back to the television in the corner. Ruby and the nurse were both avidly watching this verbal sparring match, but they were being quiet about it and besides Lacey was winning. “I was in a coma. I have amnesia.”

Keith scoffed. “Amnesia? Oh, well that’s rich All right, fine,” he decided. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I want my stuff back.”

“Fine,” Lacey agreed with a shrug. “Then, I want my stuff back.”

“What stuff?”

“Your hair plugs,” Lacey replied without a pointed glance at the hair in question.

The other people in the room faded away as Keith protested, “You can’t take my hair back!”

“I paid for it,” Lacey reminded him.

“Well, then, I want your boobs back,” Keith grumbled. “I paid for those.”

“Oh, keep your hair,” Lacey sniffed. “I’m a changed woman, Keith.”

And she was. After all, she had decided last night to be the woman worth jumping on train tracks for, the kind of woman who inspired utter devotion and who was part of a family and not one scared by change and frightened of death. She had survived death, and nothing and no one, not even Keith Nottingham, was going to get in her way of living the rest of her life.

Sure, the old Lacey French had loved to rile men like Keith up. To take the unflappable, unshakeable, icemen and melt them with fire and passion until their tempers ran hot as her own. She may not remember a single second of her life with Turman Gold, but she could remember all too well her life with Keith Nottingham, and sure it had been entertaining, but none of it had been particularly pleasant, nor was it anything she was proud of.

“Go ahead,” Keith growled. “Go ahead and marry him, you-you fake titted bitch.”

With that epithet, Keith swiveled on his foot and disappeared out the door. Beside her, Ruby whistled. “Holy buckets, Lacey,” she mumbled with a nod of approval. “Moving on to greener pastures!”

“Yeah!” Lacey agreed, high on the adrenaline that only a fight brought out in her.

Out with the old Lacey French, in with the new.

\--

As Gold stepped out onto the fourth floor after a particularly long stop on the third floor where the lady with the ficus had nearly gotten the fern stuck in the closing door, he made it to Lacey’s room only to find it empty.

The bed was stripped and the tables were empty of the flowers and vases that had taken up the entirety of the room only yesterday. The air left his lungs as his blood froze in his chest. He was transported back to a similar sight in this same hospital, and a familiar voice was in his ears.

“Gold!” the familiar voice exclaimed. Tinker appeared at his side and grabbed his arm, shaking him out of his reverie. “They moved her!”

“They moved her?” Gold repeated, hoping like hell he had heard her right.

Tinker took one look at him and sympathy flooded her face. “Come with me,” Tinker said as she maneuvered him through the floor.

HIs feet weren’t working quite right, as the blood had seemed to leave his head entirely. He had thought- he had- “Where?”

“Downstairs,” Tinker said. She did not say a word about how pale he was or how he stammered but led him to the elevator just before it closed and jabbed the button for the second floor. Tinker led him expertly through the maze of outpatient rooms on the second floor, but even she nearly went right past the room they were looking for. Tinker skidded to a halt and then grabbed the back of Gold’s jacket to pull him backward. “Gold!” she hissed with a nod back at the door.

“What?” he demanded before he looked where Tinker was nodding her head. Lacey sat upright in the bed closest to the door, chatting to her roommate. “Oh,” he muttered as relief coursed through his system. Lacey was alive. She was okay.

Lacey must have felt someone staring, for she turned away from her chatter to find him standing awkwardly in the hallway. At the sight of him, Lacey’s whole face lit up. “Gold!”

“Hi, Lacey,” he mumbled as he entered the room. His face was flushed as the blood returned to his system and his nerves slowly unwound. She was alive. She was okay.

“Hi,” Lacey repeated.

“My God,” Gold chuckled to himself as he grabbed his chest, embarrassed at how shaken up he had been. He took the moment to glance over Lacey and found the still, corpse-like woman from the fourth floor entirely gone. The woman from the tracks was back. “You look really good,” he said.

“I feel really good,” Lacey told him as she reached over and grabbed his hands. Behind him, Nurse Tinker inhaled sharply from her post by the door.

“Um,” Gold mumbled as he looked down at where her small hands encircled his callous palms.

“You know what?” she asked, though it didn’t seem to be much of a question. “Facing death makes a woman evaluate her life.”

She wasn’t wrong about that. Gold opened his mouth but didn’t get a chance to speak. Like her sister, it seemed once Lacey French had something to say, she was going to say it. Gold had learned it was best to just let Belle say her piece, so he held his tongue and waited.

“And I’ve been thinking about mine,” Lacey continued, “and I haven’t liked what I’ve seen. I’ve seen a woman who has courtside tickets to the Bulls, a lucrative investment portfolio, an apartment on La Rue du Faubourg, Saint Honore-”

“Where?” Gold managed.

“Paris,” the brunette in the other bed said with a whimsical sigh.

Lacey continued on, “But I’ve also seen a woman who has no one to trust. No one to have a life with.”

Gold wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but her eyes were intent on him and he felt he should at least hear her out. So, he kept holding her hand. Perhaps Jefferson had been right when he said they had all needed each other. Maybe he could be here for her like her family had been there for him-

“You were there when I needed someone the most,” Lacey told him and there were tears in her eyes now. Gold pondered for a moment how alike and yet different she looked from her sister once you truly knew them and almost missed the next part entirely. “You gave me a second chance at life. It took a coma to wake me up.”

Gold could tell Lacey was winding up to something, but he wasn’t entirely sure what so he smiled encouragingly.

“My family loves you,” Lacey said as she searched his face. “I might as well love you. Truman Gold, will you marry me?”

Gold didn’t get a chance to respond because behind him Nurse Tinker passed out in a dead faint. At the sound of her dropping to the floor, both he and Lacey jumped apart.

Gold took a step towards Tinker but an orderly beat him to her. “Isobel? Isobel?” the nameless nurse asked. “Are you all right?”

Gold wavered back and forth, glancing between the passed out nurse and the waiting woman in the bed and for the countless day in a row, had no idea what to do next. 

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you eagle-eyed readers may have noticed, there are two more chapters! (though I reserve the right to change it to sixteen chapters total if things get away from me) 
> 
> Now, I know a lot of people may be going "LACEY!" but to be fair, she truly thinks she had just forgotten this man, and she obviously agreed to marry him for a reason. right? In better news, she has kicked Keith to the curb and is striving to be the woman she knows she can be. Utterly unaware that her twin is in love with the very man she just asked to marry. 
> 
> Sadly, no Belle and Gold interaction on this chapter, but they are still dealing with the New Year's fall out and Lacey waking up. Next chapter, a moment alone between Belle and Gold, the Mills sister make an appearance, and everyone attends a wedding.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys- I am so glad each and every one of you caught the "barking cough" joke I made at Ruby's expense.

  
Belle slipped inside Storybooke Apartments that evening on a mission. The evening was bitter cold, and the air was thick with promise which could only mean snow. The city rumbled and shook, the quiet of the holidays broken as the new year rushed forward. Everywhere Belle turned, there were new beginnings.

Lacey had called her from the hospital with the glad tidings. Lacey French would become Mrs. Truman Gold in the hospital chapel in two days time. Would Belle mind pick up a suitable dress and shoes from her apartment, take the dress to the dry cleaner, alert the newspapers, get a bouquet, and oh, yes, would she be her maid of honor?

What could Belle have said? What reason could she give her twin sister beside the ugly truth? “Sorry, no, Lace, I’m afraid I can’t do that because I’m head over heels in love with the man you’re engaged to marry” was not a suitable response, so Belle had choked down the jealousies and the want eating her alive from the inside and agreed.

Belle had...thought maybe there was something there with Gold, but enough was enough. Belle had to...she had to put this thing behind her. So, after a day of running her maid of honor errands, Belle drove over to Logan Square. She double parked Lacey’s BMW and headed upstairs to face the music. Truman Gold would be her brother-in-law and nothing more.

Belle had accepted that, and there was no time like the present to embrace this change of heart. She had one last thing to do before the wedding, and that was to let Gold go. Before Belle could make it to his floor, Selena Mills came tumbling down the stairs with a man trailing behind her on the stairs. Neither of them noticed Belle, so she paused on the landing to wait for them to pass by.

“You’re hair is looking very big tonight,” the young man complimented Selena with an appreciative leer at the area located significantly below the hairline.

“Why thank you,” Selena cooed. “I love your new cologne.”

“Yeah?” the guy swelled. “It’s called Paris Guy. It’s from France.”

“Nice,” Selena said with a clap of her hands and a giggle. She grabbed the man’s suspenders and began to tug him down the stairs when they noticed Belle.

“How ya doing?” the guy greeted with a nod of his head. He had two very large ears on side of his head and equally as large, dark brown eyes that made it impossible to look anywhere else.

“Hey,” Selena cut in before Belle could respond. “You going to see Gold?”

“Yeah,” Belle nodded, bracing for an explosion.

None came. “He is the best looking guy in this building,” Selena said knowingly with a wink and a nudge as if just the other day she hadn’t threatened Belle with karate over Gold.

“Hey!” her paramour interjected, wounded to the core at this proclamation.

Selena was quick with a response. “But you,” she said with a pat on his pecs, ”are the best looking guy on the second floor.”

The guy brightened as if the sun had just appeared through the clouds. “Selena!” he chuckled as he slung his arm around her waist.

“Will!” Selena giggled as the two tumbled past Belle back down the stairs. Their mumbled flirting filled the small staircase, and it echoed around her long after they disappeared from view.

Belle was only galvanized back into action when the outside door swung shut behind the new couple. She could only hope she bounced back so quickly from her unrequited feelings for Truman Gold.

It took a moment for Belle to muster her courage before she finally knocked on Gold’s door. She didn’t know what she expected but it was not the sharp curse from inside followed by Gold’s voice as he approached the door, tense and irritable. “I don’t want any flowers from you, I am not wearing black underwear and I definitely do not want to move in with you,” he exclaimed as he whipped open the door,” Sele-! ”

He faltered in mid exclamation, his hair askew. He had on an ancient black suit from the seventies, wrinkled and moth-eaten. There was a black bowtie dangling around his neck and a pair of suspenders dangling from his waist as if he had forgotten them entirely. He looked utterly disheveled and completely adorable.

Gold’s scowling face quickly dropped into confusion, but he recovered quickly, “Belle.”

“Well,” Belle said. “I don’t have any flowers. I wouldn’t mind seeing the black underwear, but under the circumstances,” she shook her head softly though she didn’t break eye contact, “I don’t think we should move in together.”

Gold relaxed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought you were Selena,” he explained sheepishly.

Belle nodded solemnly. “I get that a lot.”

Gold, still visibly on edge, managed a smile. He gestured for her to join him. “Do you wanna come in?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?” he repeated, perking up slightly.

“Yeah,” Belle said again as she stepped over the threshold into his apartment. She stuck her hands in her coat pocket and palmed the small item wrapped in newspaper in her pocket. “Wow, so that’s...Wow. Your wedding tux?’

Gold arched a brow at her. “Hmm?” he asked and he looked behind him at where the door was blank and bare.

“Your tux,” Belle repeated as she nodded at the suit he wore. It wasn’t exactly nice enough to call a tuxedo, but it got the message across. “I like the bowtie.”

Gold ripped it off his neck so fast, he tore some of his hair out. with it “Ow,” he mumbled as he threw the tie onto the hook by the door. “Yeah, well.”

Belle cleared her throat. It was time to rip the band-aid off. “I just wanted to give you this before all the presents started to pile up.” She placed the hastily wrapped item in his hands. She didn’t wait for him to finish unwrapping it, too nervous to remain silent and wait for his reaction. “I was just passing through Little Italy. I looked in a window, and-”

“Florence,” Gold whispered as the newspaper dropped to the floor.

“Florence,” Belle nodded as they both stared at the small snow globe in his hands. The Italian name of the city, Firenze, was printed in gold along the side and the snow clouded and fell over the Duomo of the Florence Cathedral with its arches and domed ceiling.

She had seen it there in the window while dropping off Lacey’s wedding dress to the only dry cleaners in the city she trusted when she had seen it nestled in an antique store window as if it had been waiting for her to find it.

“Thank you,” Gold breathed as he turned it reverently in his hands. “It’s really beautiful.”

“And I wanted to say that I think that Lacey...is a very lucky lady,” Belle said as she kept a smile fixed firmly on her face. It was true and she meant it. She wanted them to be happy. She wanted them both to be happy.

Gold hesitated. “Thank you,” he said as he put the snow globe down on the end table beside them. His fingers caressed the top of the globe as if he was already far away in Florence.

The empty space inside Belle grew until she felt as if she would disappear entirely right there on the spot. When he did not look back up at her, Belle broke the silence. “I had to say that,” she said,”because you’re going to be my brother-in-law.”

“Ha, ha,” Gold deadpanned through a smile tilted the corner of his mouth. “Well...I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other then.”

He was being kind, but this casual mention of the rest of their lives together as mere in-laws was too much for her. “I better get going,” she said and without waiting, she turned for the door. It was as if she underwater, striving for the surface, every second agony-

“Hey, Belle,” Gold called behind her, but she didn’t pause. She had the door open and was already disappearing down the stairs. “Belle!”

She stopped and turned back to find him standing in his doorway above the stairs, looking down at her. His hair reflected silver in the light of his apartment and Belle’s heart twisted so violently in her chest she thought it would escape to climb back up those very stairs and jump into his outstretched hand.

“Can you give me any reason…why I shouldn’t marry your sister?’

Belle had not expected that. “Oh,” she said as a million reasons came to the tip of her tongue. One better than the next. But then Lacey’s face came to her mind. Her still, slack face as she slept in a coma, pale except for the blood-stained bandage around her head. Her eyes fluttering open, blue as the deep blue sea and confused and lost in a way Lacey had not been since they were children. And lastly, all smiles, alive once more.

Belle swallowed everything back, and thankful for the shadows on the staircase, shook her head. “I can’t.”

And with that, she fled down the stairs.

\--

The morning before his second wedding, Gold did not bother to knock before he barged into Regina’s office. Without a word, he threw a newspaper clipping onto her desk and turned and headed straight back out the door.

Regina picked it up as it might explode. “What’s this?” she called after him before he could escape back into the hall.

Gold swung around and shook his head. “Sorry, it’s a wedding invitation.”

Regina held it at arm’s length and skimmed the wedding announcement listed in black and white in the Chicago Tribune. “Wait a minute,” she called out to him. “This is your wedding invitation!”

“So?”

Regina dangled it fall from her fingers as she fixed him with a pointed look. “Whom are we marrying?”

“Regina,” Gold grumbled, but she persisted. So, he returned to her desk and tapped the second line of the announcement with his index finger. “Lacey French,” he read aloud before she turned to leave once more.

“The coma girl? Are you insane?”

“Yes, Regina,” Gold said as he threw his arms out to the side. “I’m insane. Every day I go and sit in a booth like a veal. I work every holiday. I go visit my son’s gravestone on the north side of town and wait for my turn to die and now a kind and beautiful woman has asked me to marry her, despite all that, and I have said yes. Okay? So, what? That makes me a raving, total lunatic?”   
  
Regina didn’t point out that yes, it did. Instead, she said, “The wedding is tomorrow, Gold.”

He knew that. He knew it was going to be in the very hospital chapel where Neal had received last rites, and he knew it was going to be a woman who barely knew him and despite his protestations, had insisted she knew wanted she wanted. It had become apparent to him over his conversation with Lacey yesterday that once she knew what she wanted, she got it.

He just for the life of him couldn’t understand why she wanted him.

Gold did not tell Regina any of that. “I know it’s tomorrow, Regina,” he said. “But you know what? I even wish it was yesterday because you know what? That would mean that today that I would be out of this city, that I finally would go to Florence for Neal like I promised him I would, and I might finally find some peace for once in this miserable life.”

Regina ignored his outburst entirely. “What happened with the other girl?”

Gold shook his head before he had to look down at his shoes to hide the devastation in his eyes. “She didn’t want me,” he finally said and before Regina could say another word, he disappeared back out in the hall.

\--  
  
The day of the wedding dawned gay and bright. The chapel floor was dappled with colors of every color from the stained glass windows lining the walls, and even if there was a line of others propped up in their beds awaiting last rights and other faces waiting for their own stories to begin or end, the current group clustered at the altar and in the seats were waiting for something of their own.

“Maybe he forgot,” Mary Margaret whispered to her husband.

“A man doesn’t forget his wedding day,” David whispered back.

“Maybe he’s stuck in traffic,” Emma chimed in from where he sat behind them with Jefferson. She shifted uncomfortably in the folding chair as she prepared the old Polaroid camera for the ceremony.

Out in the vestibule, Lacey pulled at the white silk midi dress clinging to her hips. “This isn’t...this looks-” she turned to Belle who held the bouquet of flowers. “Does this look ridiculous?”

Belle stared straight ahead at the front of the chapel, away from the hallway. She shook her head but did not bother to so much as look over at her sister. ”No, you look fine.”

“All right,” Lacey said as she nervously spread her palm across her hips. She held the IV in her other hand, standing on her own, though still slightly unsteady on her feet. Regina Mills had arrived shortly before and kept looking over her shoulder at the identical twins with an appraising look on her face that made Belle uncomfortable. Nurse Tinker had also snuck in on a break and was chatting animatedly with Lacey’s roommate, Ruby, who had come down for the festivities.

“Hey, you got the rings?” Lacey asked, breaking Belle’s concentration.

“Yeah, I got the rings,” she said as she tilted the bouquet to show the wedding bands tied to the bottom. They had been their parents, the only thing available at such short notice. Belle personally doubted whether the dented gold band would stay on Gold’s slender finger, but she didn’t bother to voice her opinion. She didn’t trust it.

Her nerves were stretched to the breaking point, and every sound made her tense up and crane her neck around to see if Gold had finally appeared at the end of the hallway. “What’s the matter with you, Belle?” Lacey demanded under her breath as she tugged her makeshift gossamer veil back into place.

Belle had just about enough keeping quiet, and she was trying to be as positive as possible about this entire nightmare, but her nerves were wound so tightly she was about to be sick right there over by the confession booth. “You suck,” Belle allowed herself as she hunched her shoulders.

Lacey paused. “I suck, or the dress sucks?”

Belle took a moment to glance back down at the cocktail negligee Lacey had selected as her wedding dress/nightgown and shrugged. “It’s a toss-up.”

There was a commotion at the front of the chapel, and Lacey and Belle turned together as one to find Gold coming down the aisle in his too big for him suit and Neal’s trench coat.

“Oh,” Mary Margaret said in a stage whisper loud enough to reach everyone in the room. “Here he is.”

Belle’s heart twisted violently at the sight of it. Gold, only at the last moment, remembered he was wearing his jacket and with a silent apology, he turned around and headed right back up the aisle.

“He’s just a little nervous,” David whispered back over to Jefferson as Gold returned to making his way up the aisle. He managed to bump into one of the pews, and Regina reached out to steady him.

“You’re not kidding,” Jefferson mumbled.

“He’s fine,” Emma sighed happily as she snapped a photo as Gold finally made it to the altar. The music cue began as the groom arrived in his proper place, and Lacey nodded at her to proceed her. Belle was grateful her hands were clasped and hidden under the full bouquet of white roses because her hands were shaking violently.

As the music swelled, Gold looked up at the movement and their eyes met. Belle inhaled as Gold smiled, and if she just let the little voices in her head go quiet, she could almost pretend-

The crowd around her stood, indicating Lacey had come out of the vestibule for her grand entrance. Gold, however, did not look away from Belle, and it was she, not him that tore her gaze away as she joined him at the altar.

Lacey took her time down the aisle, partly due to having to roll the IV down the carpeted path, and partly because Lacey loved an entrance. Belle kept her gaze on her sister, and only when Lacey had arrived safely between herself and Gold, did she lift her gaze from the flowers in her hand.

The priest, relieved to finally start, began without further prompting. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join-”

“I object.”

Belle’s neck snapped up. That had been Gold’s voice.

“Oh, gee-” Jefferson groaned from the crowd.

“I..I didn’t get to that part yet,” the priest protested as he flipped through the Bible’s pages as if to check he hadn’t somehow skipped ahead.   
  
Screw it, Belle decided. “I would have to object too,” she declared, and Gold smiled at her like they were the only two in the room. Lacey looked back over her shoulder as if she had forgotten Belle had been standing there.

The priest snapped the Bible shut. “What about you?” he demanded of Lacey.

Lacey shook her head. “Oh, I’m- “ she stammered, “I’m thinking.”

Mary Margaret got to her feet. “What is going on?”

Gold took a deep breath. “I am in love with this woman,” he announced to the room.

“We know,” David chuckled. “Hence the wedding.”.

“Not her,” Gold said with a wince. He leaned around Lacey and gestured towards where Belle stood. “Her.”

Belle couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing, and her body seemed stuck in place, unresponsive as her need to do the right thing waged war with the overwhelming, giddy joy bubbling up inside her. Lost in her own little world, she didn’t notice everyone had turned to her for her reaction until Mary Margaret exclaimed,” Belle, what did you do?”

Belle sputtered but Gold came to the rescue. “Belle didn’t do anything,” he protested “It was me. It was all me.” He turned to where Emma sat. “Um, Emma, how you doing? You doing okay?”

Emma, having clearly the best time of anyone there, grinned and snapped a photo.

“Um,” Gold mumbled as he turned back to the rest of the family. “Do you remember that day at the hospital?” he asked them all before he shook his head. “ Of course, you remember that day at the hospital. Well, um there was a little mix-up. Um, I saw Lacey get pushed onto the tracks, and, uh, I saved her life. But when I got to the hospital, they wouldn't let me see her. So, um, then someone told the doctor that she was my fiance.”

In the crowd, Nurse Tinker blushed, but no one else seemed to notice.

“Only, um- Only, it’s not true.” Gold exhaled. “I was never engaged to Lacey.”

A silence fell as everyone processed this. Belle closed her eyes, dizzy with confusion, elation and more confusion. “Why didn’t you say something?” she asked him.

He just shook his head. “Because I didn’t know how to tell you.”

Belle looked back over at him, and his face was so wretched, she believed him. He turned back to the others, including a for once in her life utterly speechless Lacey. “We never even met until that day on the tracks,” he told her. “And, um, just when we were in the hospital room, everything happened so fast.” Gold gestured vaguely towards Emma, who was grinning widely as if Christmas had come early. “And I couldn’t tell you the truth. And then I didn’t wanna tell you the truth because, um…” he paused and looked at the whole group collected around the altar with a smile of a truly lucky man. “The truth was that I fell in love with you.”

Mary Margaret turned to both the men on either side of her. “You fell in love with me?” she repeated as she pointed at herself.

Gold chuckled. “No. No- Yes. All of you. I went from being all alone to being...a fiance, a friend, part of a family again.”

Mary Margaret and David were clutching at each other, not in anger or dismay, but looking up at each other lovingly. Emma had tears rolling down her cheeks with a smile splitting her face as Jefferson stood beside her with his hand on her shoulder. He looked proud, and it occurred to Belle that Jefferson had known about this all along.

Gold turned to Lacey. “I might have saved your life on the tracks that day. But you know what?” he asked her. “You really saved mine. You allowed me to be a part of your family, and I haven't had that in a really long time.”

Flowers petals were falling around Belle’s feet from her death grip on the flowers, but she couldn’t move. He had never been engaged to Lacey- he had never even met Lacey- she had been right- all this time and she had been right- but that didn’t comfort her much right now.

“And I just didn’t want to let go of that,” Gold confessed. “So even though it was just for a little while, I will love them always.” He hung his head. “I’m so, very sorry.”

Lacey, having somehow lost the focus at her own wedding, opened her mouth but before anyone could respond to this bombshell, there was a commotion in the hallway outside the chapel. Raised voices echoed and then a tall man appeared, followed closely by a woman at his heels. He looked vaguely familiar, and when he saw Lacey at the altar, he made a beeline towards them.

“Lacey French is engaged to me!” he announced as he made his way up the aisle and it was only when he got closer did Belle recognize Lacey’s old boyfriend, Keith Nottingham. “I object to this wedding!”

“Get in line,” the man of the cloth told him before he turned and departed the group altogether. Gold stepped quietly to the side to allow the larger man space before the priest.

“And I object to your objection,” the woman said as she arrived at the altar. It had taken her slightly longer as she struggled with her sky-high stilettos.

“Who’s that?” Mary Margaret whispered to Jefferson.

“Keith’s wife,” he responded with a long-suffering sigh.

Mary Margaret swung around on Lacey, aghast. “You got engaged to a married man?”

“Yes,” Lacey huffed. “And I was in a coma when my sister makes a play for my- sort of my fiance.”

“Lacey, seriously?” Mary Margaret exclaimed. “You’re better than some-some homewrecker!”

Lacey bristled. “Says you! As I remember David was engaged to his high school sweetheart when you met him-”

“I was eighteen!” David was saying in protest of this low blow.

“I’m going to press charges,” Keith’s wife was saying to anyone who would listen.

“Hold on, hold on, just hold on right there,” Emma called as she hurried forward with her camera to jump into the fray for the best possible photos. Belle caught her around the arm and hoisted her on to the altar out of the fray, as Jefferson popped up at Lacey’s side.

As the group yelled at each other, all vying to be heard, Gold had slowly backed away until he was on the fringes. Belle, ignoring the chaos around her, watched him go but she did not go after him. Their eyes met once more. He nodded at her, his smile tight and brittle, and just like that he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so. The truth is out! 
> 
> How does everyone feel?
> 
> \--  
> Next (FINAL) chapter is wrapping up this story with a long-awaited happy ending. (Not a spoiler- the tags literally say that.) Shout out if there is any character you hope to see or any plot points that are left dangling. Thanks for being a part of this story everyone, every comment has been so appreciated on this.


	15. Chapter 15

The apartment was quiet and still. Gold sat at the kitchen table, a finger of whiskey untouched in a tumbler before him as the shadows began to deepen and fall across the walls. He still wore his suit, though he had toed off his shoes at the door and the bow tie was coiled on the table beside him.

He did not feel relieved. The truth had come out, and it had been….received as best as it could have been in the situation, but he did not feel relieved. He felt alone. He could not bring himself to go to the one place he knew he belonged….so he sat at his kitchen table as the sun set on his would-be wedding day.

The knock on the door startled him to where he nearly knocked over the whiskey entirely. Gold stood without thinking, something like hope infusing his chest as he made his way to the door. In the few seconds, he tried to tell himself it wouldn’t be her- but his heart refused to listen. She had been there just the night before-

As the door swung open to reveal Regina, Gold tried (and failed) to keep his disappointment off his face. Regina simply arched a brow at him. “Not who you were expecting?”

“No,” Gold hurried to add with a shake of his head. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

“Hoping to see then?” Regina amended.

Gold had no response for that, so he buried his hands in his pockets. “What can I do for you, Regina?”

She sighed. “Look, I understand today was...stressful,” she said, picking her words carefully. “Now, before you snap at me or close the door in my face, I just want to say that I’m glad you came to your senses in time.”

Gold raked a hand through his hair. He had spent the better half of the morning arguing with himself against even showing up at the chapel. Things had spiraled out of his control, and he had let himself get swept up in the madness at the behest of Jefferson and some twisted hope of his own to be a part of a family again. It had only been watching Belle walk up the aisle behind Lacey, had he truly gotten the courage to do what he had to do.

“It’s been a long day,” he said as he wrapped a hand around the door frame.

“Yea,” Regina said. “I thought…I just wanted to say that, uh, I’m sorry things didn’t work out and, you know, right now...you should get in touch with the child within, and,” Regina cast about, “explore what you want out of life and...you know, don’t just start drinking yourself into a stupor because you’ll end up like my mother, and you-you deserve better than that. So.”

Regina sniffed and looked pointedly up at the light in the hallway overhead with a scowl that only barely concealed the tears in her eyes. “Is that flickering or -”

Gold pushed the door open. “Come on in,” he said with a nod inside. “I opened a bottle but I haven’t brought myself to indulge quite yet.”

Regina recovered enough to scoff. “Well, it depends on what you’re drinking,” she said as she entered the apartment without a look backward.

“How're things going with Selena and Mr. Second Floor?” Gold asked as he closed the door behind her.

\--

Gold took Regina’s advice to heart. After a night spend reminiscing about when they had last been truly happy, both of them had left each other with a renewed sense of purpose and drive. Gold had given his two week’s notice at work. It was time to rejoin the world of the living and there was a whole world out there to explore. He had spent too long living in the past, waiting for his time to come, and not enough time living.

Regina had also decided to rejoin the world. As Selena moved in with Will Scarlett in 210B, Regina had decided to take a trip out to a western ranch out in the Rockies. She had put him in charge of Storybrooke Apartments for the foreseeable future until he had a better idea of what he wanted to do with his life.

Gold had received a postcard less than a day later. Regina expressed her love of the outdoors, and the change from city life with references to great mountains and lakes, blue skies as well as the owner of the ranch who Regina mockingly referred to as ‘a modern day Robin Hood’. She then went on at lengths describing the gentleman in a way that gave Gold hope for his friend’s future happiness.

He had a less than an hour in his final shift, and even Mother Superior’s constant prattling on how no one had loyalty to their jobs these days was enough to deter him from enjoying the last few minutes at the station which had changed his life. He had grown so detached from her voice, he was almost surprised when she repeated she was going on break, almost into his ear.

“All right,” he said with a wave towards the booth door. She sniffed and sauntered out of the door without a goodbye. His replacement would be here in the next thirty minutes, and if his luck held out, he’d be gone before she returned.

  
A token dropped into the metal bin, and he scooped it out with practiced ease before releasing the lever for the commuter to go through. It was the early afternoon on a weekday, still cold enough that most tourists were opting for the convenience of cabs over the windy platforms of the elevated train.

He lost track of time, his mind wandering, as it was wont to do to a pair of blue eyes. He had not brought himself to reach out to Belle or to any of them after the day at the chapel, and now, two weeks later, he had given up on ever hearing from any of them again. He hoped they were happy, that they were together and-

A token dropped and without looking, Gold reached out to snag it. His fingers encountered a cold metal, but instead of raised edges of a disc, his finger slipped into the circle of a ring. There was a golden wedding band perched on the tip of his finger.

In the window, there was a host of familiar faces, but the only one Gold saw was the one with bright blue eyes crinkled into a hopeful smile. “Gold,” Belle greeted him with the slightest bite of her lower lip. “I need to ask you a question.”

Jefferson towered over her and pressed her shoulder in excitement. “Get down on your knee. It’s more romantic!”

Mary Margaret, her grin the widest of all, elbowed him in the chest without taking her eyes off Gold, who sat immobile in the face of this dream. “She’s proposing! Let her do it1”

“I am letting her do it,” Jefferson shot back as he rubbed his ribs.

Belle didn’t so much as take her eyes off him as his own gaze skittered over them all. They were here. They were actually here-

“Can she come in there?” Emma asked where her face was pressed up against the glass.

For a moment, Gold couldn’t find the words. Finally, he shook his head, slow and certain. “I can’t,” he managed. Belle’s smile faltered for a moment before he grinned back at her, unable to help himself. “Not without a token.”

Belle smiled back at him in a way that promised trouble later, but without so much as blinking dropped a token into the basin. Gold had, he was sure, the world’s silliest grin on his face but he did not look away as he pressed the button to let her pass through.

“She’s doing it!” David hissed in a whisper loud enough to carry through the glass. Gold chuckled and turned around in his seat as Belle entered the booth with a burst of cold air. He rose to meet her but she careened into his arms before he could so much as take a step. They both fell back into his seat as Belle wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Marry me?” she asked.

Gold nodded. “Yeah.”

“I love you,” Belle said as she gazed up into his eyes.

Gold’s own heart was in the middle of doing gymnastics and his brain had short-circuited around the time his finger touched the ring, so he was happy when he managed to respond, “I love you back.” He leaned down and Belle enthusiastically lifted her face to his for their first actual proper kiss.

She was soft and warm and made a soft noise of pleasure that made his fingers clutch at her coat and deepen the kiss so he could better taste the trace of vanilla and sugar on her tongue. They disappeared into a world that they had so long been denied access to, and it was only the sound of enthusiastic voices that brought them back down to earth to find they still had an audience.

“Aw,” Mary Margaret said as she clapped her hands to her chest. “That’s so nice!”

“I’m so happy!” Emma said as she burst into happy tears and buried her face into her father’s side. Belle chuckled and buried her face into his neck to hide it from her family, but it gave her access to all sorts of wonderful spots that Gold could only clutch her tight and try not to blush as her family continued to smile at him through the window.

Well...their family.

\--

“Well,” Lacey stepped back and looked at her sister approvingly. “That should do it.”

Belle, dressed in head to toe in ivory lace, was as beautiful of a bride as Lacey had ever seen in her life. Her bouquet of spring roses was wrapped in a blue ribbon that matched their eyes and Lacey’s Tiffany’s earrings dangled from Belle’s ears.

“Something borrowed, something blue,” Lacey said as she tapped them in turn.

“Something old, something new,” Belle finished. “Thank you again, this is...too much.”

Lacey scoffed as she draped her arms over her twin. Her bridesmaid dress, the same blue as the ribbon, rustled against the lace train of the dress, but Belle dropped the bouquet to the bridal suite couch to better wrap her arms around her own sister as well.

“Now, don’t you two start again,” Mary Margaret warned from where she was finishing her hair. “I just finished fixing my mascara.”

They broke apart with a laugh. “Oh!” Belle remembered as she twisted back to the vanity. “Where are the passports?”

“With your suitcases,” Lacey said as she reached up to fix a strand of Belle’s hair. “Relax.”

Belle exhaled nervously. “I just want to surprise him,” she admitted.

“A honeymoon to Florence will certainly do that,” Mary Margaret said as she stood.

“I’d give him the world if I could,” Belle replied fondly as she looked down at the engagement ring on her finger.

“Oh, don’t start this again,” Lacey teased as she bumped her sister with her hips. “If I have to hear you wax poetic on how wonderful the love of your life is one more time, I’ll steal him back for myself.”

Before Belle could respond to this empty threat, the door opened to reveal Emma, pink-cheeked and flushed with the unseasonably warm May morning. As her eyes landed on Belle, the teen’s eyes started to swim with tears which she quickly hid by lifting the camera to snap a photo.

“Emma, get out of here with that!” Mary Margaret said as she shooed her daughter from the door. “What if Truman walks by!”

“He’s with Dad and Jefferson,” Emma told her with a teen’s certainty. “Besides, I wanted to get some photos of Belle before the wedding.”’

“Only if you’re in them with her,” Lacey said as she took the camera.

Emma hurried to join Belle’s side, the high rise of her dress covering the scar from her transplant surgery nicely. Three days after Belle had asked Gold to marry her, they had gotten the call from the hospital.

Now, five months later, Emma was standing and walking on her own despite the doctor’s estimate of six months for a full recovery. The soon to be Golds had tried to push the wedding back, but Emma had put her foot down and demanded it is set in May so she would have something to look forward to.

As Lacey took the photo, Mary Margaret joined her side. “Life doesn’t always turn out the way you plan, does it?”

Lacay lowered the camera with a laugh. “No, it doesn’t, but I prefer it this way.”

The door cracked open again, and this time Jefferson’s head, complete in a velvet top hat, appeared. “You ready?” he asked Belle.

She grabbed the bouquet with a grin as bright as the sun. Mary Margaret ushered Emma and Jefferson out of the bride’s way, and the three disappeared but Lacey lingered behind. Belle noticed and paused in the doorway with a quizzical look. “Everything okay, Lace?”

“When did you fall in love with Gold exactly?” Lacey asked her as she took in the perfect smile that had lingered on her sister’s face these past few months, and that perfectly content look she shared with Gold whenever they were in the same room.

“I...don;t know when exactly,” Belle replied as she gazed out into the hallway where the wedding march had started to play. Then, she smiled and turned back to reach her hand out to where Lacey stood in the shadows of the room. “Must have been while you were sleeping.”

Lacey reached back out and took her twin’s hand as Belle pulled her back out into the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And just like that- we have come to the end.
> 
> I couldn't help but add that last scene. I always wondered how the brothers fared after this little incident, and I like to think this only made Lacey and Belle stronger together. It goes without saying that everyone lived happily ever after.
> 
> Thanks for reading and commenting- this has been a fun exercise in adapting a screenplay. If you enjoyed this, please check out my other stories The Story Teller, The Gate and The House Guest. If you are not a Lacey fan, please give The Gate and the House Guest a try, I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> While You Were Sleeping is one of my favorite rom-coms so of course I'm going to completely bastardize it into a gender-switched angst romance. 
> 
> If you would like to enjoy a faithful retelling of While You Were Sleeping (Completed!), go read afewmistakesago's version right here on A03!


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